@1RBFjr
That’s a terrible idea. What time?
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2018
- Messages
- 4,585
- Likes
- 17,076
This was the scene 100 years ago today at the corner of Gay Street and Church Avenue in downtown Knoxville.
Photo is from the owner of The Flower Pot florist that sits on this corner today. This is on Gay Street at the Knoxville Sentinel building (this is one of the papers that preceded the Knoxville News Sentinel). The building in the photo is gone.
I figured out this was the Playograph of game 2 of the 1921 World Series between the New York Giants and the New York Yankees. The World Series didn’t have a national radio broadcast for at least another decade, so people 'watched' the games on Playographs. Think of it as the great grandfather of Game Cast ;-)
If you look just to the right of the traffic light (the little tower), a man is sitting perched above the crowd, holding a megaphone. He's probably calling the action as it comes in via telegram (read more in the links below about how this system worked).
This game was played on October 6, 1921. All World Series games that year were played at the Polo Grounds- Yankee Stadium wouldn’t be built for two more years.
The Giants faced the Yankees in three consecutive World Series: 1921, 1922 and 1923. I looked at the line score at the bottom of the photograph and was able to eliminate games where teams had already scored by the top of the fourth. That narrowed it down to four possible games over the three different World Series.
I then started looking for each teams lineups to see the players that were playing then. The giveaway was the pitcher for each team, which is listed at the end of the lineups in the photograph. Each of those pitchers pitched a complete game. Those two pitchers never faced each other in the other World Series games, so I am pretty confident that photograph was made October 6, 1921 and it was game two of that World Series.
You’ll note that some guy named Ruth was playing, as well as Wally Pipp, the guy who later on got a headache and sat out a game and was replaced by Lou Gehrig. Also in this World Series game, two brothers were playing, one for the Yankees (Bob Meusel) and the other for the Giants (Irish Meusel). Bob Meusel was part of what became the Yankees Murderers’ Row of hitters in a few years with the addition of Gehrig.
Here's the scoring of this game: https://www.baseball-reference.com/.../NYA192110060.shtml
Fast forward to 1:17 of this video to see a Playograph in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mPHqbJXDQI...
Here's a link about the Playograph contraption:
https://www.citylab.com/.../how-did-baseball-fans.../381863/
