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NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture 14.2 (2006) 167-176


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Everything but the Game

James R. Walker

These nine photographs are part of a larger collection presented at the 2005 NINE Spring Training Conference in Tucson, Arizona. These photos were taken at Major League games in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Denver, and Cincinnati between 2002 and 2004. My focus in these nine photos and the larger collection was the activities around the game, including fans in various settings, players in pregame activities, ballpark workers, the ballparks themselves, player statues, and ballpark advertising. The captions represent a combination of my thoughts at the time I took each photograph and my later reflections. [End Page 167]


Click for larger view		 Figure 1
You may recognize the exploding scoreboard from the former Comiskey Park in Chicago. I loved the way the fans lined up under each pinwheel. To me these are the real White Sox fans: two looking toward an ever hopeful future (ever hopeful since 1917), while two others argue about why that hopeful future never happens.
[End Page 168]

Click for larger view		 Figure 2
This is the Sixth Street Bridge and PNC Park in Pittsburgh. I used black-and-white film because Pittsburgh always seemed a black, white, and gray city, from the Buco uniforms to the smoke-covered city of our distant memories. The smoke is long gone, but the gray skies are still ever present.
[End Page 169]

Click for larger view		 Figure 3
She is out of focus, but I don't care. What a happy expression (not posed) for someone with a tough job. The river, bridge, steamboat, and city give the fans something to look at while the Bucos trade away their best players for ones that immediately get injured.
[End Page 170]

Click for larger view		 Figure 4
The Wrigley Field scoreboard. I liked the strong diagonal line from the stands cutting the scoreboard in half.
[End Page 171]

Click for larger view		 Figure 5
Curt Schilling deconstructing the Cubs in a 2-1 complete game while pitching for the Diamondbacks. The steel supports provide a nice array of geometric forms to frame the action.
[End Page 172]

Click for larger view		 Figure 6
I liked the strong action of the kid's arm and his little brother's glove in this shot. That's Schilling's victim of the day warming up before the game.
[End Page 173]

Click for larger view		 Figure 7
Ah, Cubdom (you can decide on your own spelling of the dom). The social isolation, the depression, and the netting that makes the gloom even stronger. I wanted to show the netting that the Cubs installed during their dispute with Wrigleyville rooftop owners, and it provides a nice filter for this scene. Even the partial Jack Brickhouse "Hey! Hey!" can't cheer up this fan. Cubs baseball: catch the blues.
[End Page 174]

Click for larger view		 Figure 8
Barry Bonds casting a long and possibly chemically altered shadow in front of Jackie Robinson's retired number. The long shadows of night games are a reminder that night baseball is really twilight baseball for about half of the game.
[End Page 175]

Click for larger view		 Figure 9
I love how children are enamored with the greats of the game. Here are three boys having some fun with the Ernie Lombardi statue outside the new Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati.
James R. Walker is professor and chair of the Department of Communication at Saint Xavier University in Chicago. His work on sports and media, media effects, and new media technologies has been widely published. He and Rob Bellamy are presently working on a book on the history of baseball's relationship with television. As an early 1990s migrant to the Windy City, he is one of those odd people who roots for and suffers with both the Cubs and the White Sox.


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