JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1262 (from 2010)–expanded

The following photographs are part of a large-ish archive of news photo service images for the years 1917 and 1918–all are made by American firms, and almost all are related in one way or the other to WWI.  The images below are among the very few depicting wartime sports, and in all cases, these sports was baseball.

The first photo is a rather remarkable image of summer training for (as is stamped on the back of the image) “the New York Americans” baseball club, which would be more famously and more continuously called the New York Yankees.

The identifying stamp on the back also records that among the saluting folks is a sportswriter, Jerry Donovan, “(Wild Bill’s father)”–that “Wild Bill” was also “Smiling Bill”  Donovan (1876-1923), the New York Yankees’ manager for 1915-1917, being replaced in 1918 by Miller Higgins. (Huggins was famously more successful, managing some famous Yankees teams from 1918-1929, winning three World Series, taking six first place finishes, and a .597 career winning percentage with the New York club.)  Donovan was an average manager in his four MLB managerial years (including a last year in 1921 with the Phillies), finishing out with a .479 winning percentage. (He was evidently on his way to a new start with Clark Griffith’s Washington team when he was killed in a train wreck.) Among the other members of the ’17 squad were the beautifully-named Urban Shocker and Slim Love.  

And the details:

In 1918 many teams involved their players in “military training”, and this picture shows the Yankees (along with coaches and writers) doing their part to make it look as though they were making some sort of good effort having to do with the war. During the 1918 most teams mostly/sorta let the season go–not so for the Yankees or for Boston (which one its only 20th century World Series title that year).

Lovely image of two baseball ushers, 1918:

Also, this lovely picture:

And lastly, this: