The Iconic Norman Rockwell Painting: “The Dugout”!

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The Iconic Norman Rockwell Painting: “The Dugout”!

In my recent photo of the Cubs at spring training, reader Karl Isenberger noted that the Cub players in the bull pen wore uniforms similar to the Cub batboy in the iconic Norman Rockwell painting, “The Dugout.” With this information, Karl was able to determine that this spring training photo was taken on March 10,1956. It was the very first game played at Scottsdale Stadium, between the home Orioles and the visiting Cubs. This was last year the Cubs wore this uniform.

The painting is one of baseball’s most iconic images as well as one of Norman Rockwell’s best-known Saturday Evening Post covers. Many people think this great painting was what started the Cubs image as “The Lovable Losers.” That got me thing thinking more about it.  I did a little research and found some interesting tidbits:

• The image appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on September 4, 1948.
• The youth, Frank McNally, was actually a batboy for the Boston Braves, not the Cubs. He donned a Cubs uniform just for that occasion. Rockwell and Post art director Kenneth Stuart traveled to Braves Field to take photographs of him during a May 23, 1948 Boston-Chicago doubleheader (the Cubs lost both games).
• In an interview decades later, McNally remembered that they had to do a lot of work to get him to look sad: “Mr. Rockwell kept changing the tilt of my cap and doing facial expressions to demonstrate how he wanted me to look. He finally asked me if I had a dog.  When I told him I did, he said, ‘Try to think how you would feel if your dog died–that’s the look I want!’ “
• McNally was paid five dollars for the modeling job which he said took two to three hours. After the issue of the magazine was published, he was presented with a Rockwell-signed copy of it during a pre-game ceremony at Braves Field.
• The Cubs players are, from left to right: pitcher Bob Rush, manager Charlie Grimm, catcher Al Walker, and All-Star pitcher Johnny Schmitz.
• The daughter of Rockwell’s next-door neighbors, Ardis Edgerton, is the fan razzing the Cubs through her hands. She was a frequent Rockwell model.
• Charlie Grimm owned a charcoal draft of The Dugout, on which Rockwell had inscribed: “To Charles Grimm, a long suffering but wonderful manager, Norman Rockwell.”  Charlie once commented on the painting: “What an artist.  But he wasn’t really accurate. As bad as we were, the fans didn’t really boo us. Maybe they should have. ” [The Cubs won only 64 games in 1948 and finished last in the National League.]

Gary Livacari

Photo Credits: All from Google search

Information: Excerpts edited from the Norman Rockwell Wikipedia page.