While doing some research online recently I stumbled across this 1949 St. Louis Cardinals Program. The cover illustration features a cardinal, perched on a knothole in a wooden fence, watching a game being played in Sportsman’s Park.
As I was looking into the artwork of Cardinals illustrator Mike Right at the time, I was initially taken in by the figure of the cardinal. Stylisticly, it’s somewhat similar to the cardinals on the bats that adorned Cardinal uniforms of the era.
But a closer look at the in-game action shown piqued my interest. You don’t have to be the game’s biggest fan to recognize what is perhaps its most famous photo. Taken by legendary baseball photographer Charles Conlon, the picture shows Ty Cobb of the Detroit Tigers sliding into 3rd base against the New York Highlanders on Juy 23, 1910.
It would appear that the illustrator of the program cover used the Cobb photo as reference for the game action shown. While not a direct tracing of the photo (among other slight differences, in the illustration the third baseman’s leg falls further across the slider’s back and the face of the baserunner is less menacing than Cobb’s) all of the elements are there, and in the same basic positions.
While using photos for illustration reference has long been a part of an artist’s repertoire, it is interesting to me that the illustrator here used such a famous image as the artistic reference. Was this a case of the illustrator being rushed and using the first thing he could find? Or, in 1949, was the Cobb photo simply not as well-known - this being a time before the study and the history of baseball were as mainstream as they are now?
Now do this one: