Cubs Historic Photos: 20th In A Series

Doesn’t look like either Kessinger or Beckert to me, the way his face is contorted, but I seem to remember Kessinger wearing flip-down shades, which are visible in the shot. Did Beckert also? I don’t have as strong a memory of him wearing them, but maybe he did. There’s this photo of Kessinger, which was easy to find.

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/pics/don_kessinger_autograph.jpg

It hasn’t been too easy for me to find an action shot of Beckert.

It looks like the fielder has the ball well before Flood will reach the bag, which would suggest that he would have been out if stealing. And look at the ump’s right hand. Is he about to call Flood out? His left hand is open, but his right looks like it might be in the process of being made into a fist for making the out call, as he watches the infielder’s feet, which would suggest a force.

And the infielder’s hands — it looks to me like he’s about to take the ball out of his mitt for the relay throw.

The one thing that is strange is where the ump is. I know in this era, the 2nd base ump stations himself on the infield grass if there is a runner at first so he gets a good view of any steal or force play at second. I can’t figure out why he is behind 2nd if Flood was on first. Maybe this is a situation where Flood is trying for a double and Becks is fielding a throw that was off the mark, which may make him look out of position.

didn’t he? I agree with Al—the only way that’s a DP pivot is if it’s a 3-6-3 or 3-4-3…looks like Hundley may have short hopped him on the throw down and Beck was fighting the ball a little—or he was having a bit of a problem getting a handle on the ball and was turning to see where Flood was at the same time.

I remember a pretty well known SI cover from this same era with Flood making a catch in CF at Wrigley—but he appears to be trapping the ball against the wall right at the 400 Ft sign

Al – take another look at the June 30 game. Could the player in the picture be neither Kessinger or Beckert, but rather Jose Arcia, who came into the game at ss in the 2nd after Kessinger was hit by a pitch? This play might be from the top of the third inning of that game, where Flood reached 2nd on an error by the ss on a ball hit by Tim McCarver (who was no doubt talking all the way down to 1b).

Here’s Arcia’s photo from baseball cube.

The play just doesn’t look like a cover of a stolen base. The odd positioning of the fielder makes it appear as if something had gone screwy in the play. Since the PBP does not specify the error that occurred, I think this might be a photo of that play

the audiobook version of As They See ‘Em (thanks for the rec Al, this is a good book) so my first inclination was to look at the ump’s position. Based upon what’s in the book, wouldn’t the better position for the ump to see the play be more toward RF so that he was (in effect) between Kessinger/Beckert and Flood? It seems to me that his view is obscured by the the infielder.

Per Retrosheet -

6/28 – 2nd base umpire: Ken Burkhart
6/30 – 2nd base umpire: Bill Jacowski

Now just need to find pictures of one of these two. Harry Wendlestedt was also in this crew but unfortunately he wasn’t involved here as it would be easy to verify his picture.

in the background that would indicate to me that it is a double. Most of the time if there is someone on first the ump is in the infield so he can see a steal from the front not behind.

learned what “Sesquicentennial” meant in 1968. Hard to believe that just 8 years from now will be Illinois’ bicentennial – and I expect the Cubs and Sox will have patches for that as well.

Let’s hope the Cubs can put the Illinois Bicentennial patch on one sleeve and the “2017 World Champions” patch on the other.