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The Leslie Jones Boston Public Library Collection Photo Gallery
Click on any image below to see photos in full size and to start Photo Gallery:
The Leslie Jones Boston Public Library Baseball Collection, Part One
Leslie Jones was the sports photographer for the Boston Globe from the 1930’s into the early 1960’s. The vast majority of his work was from baseball’s Golden Age of the 1930’s. During this long span, he amassed a photographic collection of the Boston Red Sox and Boston Braves of close to 3000 pictures. Almost all of the photos were taken at Fenway Park or Braves Field.
In the featured photo above, we see a beautiful Don Stokes colorization from the Leslie Jones collection of Lou Gehrig and Lefty Gomez with former Yankee teammate, Billy Werber.
The collection was stored away in the recesses of the Boston Public Library and was largely forgotten. In 2011, someone from the Boston Public Library rediscovered this treasure trove. But there was one problem: Almost all of the players in the photos (other than the obvious star players) were unidentified. The Boston Public Library then contacted The Society For American Baseball Research (SABR) asking for help in identifying the pictures. I was asked to join the team headed by author Mark Stang which was tasked with identifying the players in the photos.
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My concentration was with individual and group identifications, while Mark and others did most of the action shots. Many photos were easy to identify, but others required massive amounts of research, time, and effort. It always gave me a wonderful feeling of satisfaction when I could positively identify some obscure, long-forgotten ballplayer from the ’30’s or ’40’s who would otherwise be totally lost to history. We didn’t get them all, but I’d guess we identified about 85-90% of the players in the photos
This historic collection included many individual and small group shots, team pictures, fans, gag shots, action shots, locker room shots, celebrities, players’ wives, umpires, front office personnel…you name it…if it had anything to do with Boston baseball during this period, it’s in this collection. There’s also a lot of shots taken during Red Sox-Braves interleague exhibition games. It provides a wonderful “taste” of baseball as it existed during this golden, bygone era, and also serves as a great slice of “Americana” from the ’30’s and 40’s.
There are some extremely rare photos in this amazing collection, including some never-before-seen pictures of star players like Ruth, DiMaggio, Williams, Foxx, Cronin, and Grove. There’s a lot of shots of Ruth from his last year 1935 as a member of the Boston Braves. Since the collection covers both the National League (the Braves and their NL opponents), and the American League (the Red Sox and their AL opponents), many lesser-known and largely forgotten players from both leagues are featured in the collection.
I thought it would be fun to post some of the best from the collection. In Part Two, I’ll post even more. Hope you enjoy the selections!
Gary Livacari
Photo Credits: All from Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection; Featured photo colorization by Don Stokes
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