Cubs and Wrigley Field historical sleuthing: How you can help

Over the years, I have posted quite a few photos and videos of Cubs baseball and Wrigley Field that I came across with no date attached. It’s fun to take whatever clues are in the photos or videos and sleuth out the date or game when they were taken.

I’m posting this because I’m running out of photos and videos found from various sources that I can sleuth, and during this downtime for baseball, I think it would be fun for me to do and fun for you to read.

So I’m calling on you, the BCB reader. If you’ve gone to games at Wrigley Field over the years, you likely have some photos (or maybe even video!) taken at the ballpark that you’ve stuffed in a forgotten drawer — you know, back when we actually had to take film in to be processed and printed.

I’m asking you to take a look around and see if you can find any of these old photos. Perhaps you don’t know when they were taken and would like me to sleuth them — or perhaps you do, and you’d like to challenge me to figure it out. I’d love to take up that challenge.

If you’ve got old prints, scan them and email them to me using the email address posted on the masthead to this site. If you have photos that are already in digital form, so much the better, send them along to the same email.

Now, as for the photo at the top of this post? I don’t have to sleuth the date, because the metadata that came with it in our photo editor says it was taken May 14, 1914, when the ballpark we now know as Wrigley Field was still Weeghman Park, home of the Chicago Whales of the Federal League.

But looking at the Chi-Feds (as they were also known) game-by-game schedule for 1914, there’s no result shown for that date. The standings and results from the Tribune for May 15, 1914, though, show that Buffalo defeated Chicago 5-4 the previous day:

Not only that, it appears that game was at Buffalo.

There’s another discrepancy regarding this that I can’t reconcile — the boxscore shown for the next day, May 15, 1914, says Chicago beat Buffalo 7-0 and their record was 12-10. But the May 15 Tribune standings show they went into that game at 11-11.

106 years later, the only answer I can give to this mystery is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. One thing that is notable about that photo, though: The view looking west down Addison Street isn’t all that much different in 2020 than it was in 1914. Well, except for the horses.

But perhaps you have a photo of a Cubs game at Wrigley Field — or even perhaps one on the road — where I can give you a more definitive answer. Send ‘em along. I’ve got lots of time to do baseball sleuthing right now.