Bottom of the Ninth (cover) Part 2

Creating my ninth cover for the Baseball Research Journal

The Society for American Baseball Research publishes the Baseball Research Journal (BRJ) twice a year with Spring and Fall numbers. I don’t know the actual dates that an issue begins to come together, but I can usually tell the time of year here in Kentucky because it is almost always the first hot day or the first chilly day of the year when I get an email from Cecilia Tan.

Besides being an award-winning author and proprietor of one of the oldest baseball blogs on the net, Cecilia is the Publications Editor of SABR. Once Cecilia gets a firm idea of the articles that will be in the upcoming issue, she sends me the table of contents along with her and SABR CEO Scott Bush’s thoughts on which would lend itself to a good cover concept.

Sometimes the subject for the cover is obvious – the first two issues I did had articles about Josh Gibson and Babe Ruth respectively – who can argue with those two guys as cover stars?

The third issue I did the cover for had a wider variety of choices. If I remember correctly, it was eventually narrowed down to an article on performance-enhancing drugs and one about Jim Bouton’s book Ball Four turning 40.

Both are great subjects that had an enormous effect on the game for wildly different reasons. In the end, I chose Jim Bouton. I could tell you a story about my disdain for the juicers and what they did to tarnish the sacred statistics of the game, but while that had a part in my choice, the bigger reason was that I really wanted to illustrate those great 1969 Seattle Pilots uniforms!

Since the previous two covers were in the subdued color range, I wanted to jack-out the color and the ‘69 Pilots road powder blues were tailor made for that.

Bonus points if you found the abstract “4” for Ball Four in the background design.

The Spring 2022 issue had seven articles on Women in Baseball, so that was a no-brainer. However, narrowing the exact subject for the cover was a bit tougher. There were articles on everything from 19th century women playing ball to the first four girls allowed on little league teams in the 1970s. I split the difference and went with the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League of the 1943-1954 era.

My reasoning for that choice was that the AAGPBL was having a resurgence in interest due to an upcoming mini-series and that through my SABR friend Mary I had been introduced to the league’s Player’s Association. Instead of picking a single individual for the cover star, I instead created the BRJ cover to look like what I envisioned a 1940s AAGPBL scorecard cover to look like.

Now cover number five was another easy choice for me.

Over at the baseball history blog/website I run, I get many requests for subjects to write and illustrate. One of the absolute most requested is Hank Greenberg. So, when Cecilia’s email arrived that Fall, I immediately zeroed in on the article about “Greenberg Gardens,” the special adjustment to shave off 30 feet of Forbes Field’s outfield to allow Hank to hit more homers when he joined the Pirates in 1947.

I knew I wanted to feature an action illustration of Greenberg hitting a dinger, so that was easy. The difficult part came in when I wanted to have a diagram of the adjusted Forbes Field left field showing Greenberg Gardens. For the life of me, I could not find any architectural drawings that called out this particular feature, but I had an ace up my sleeve – SABR.

Like I wrote yesterday, no matter what kind of obscure baseball subject you are interested in, there’s going to be a few other SABR members that share the same interest. I put out a call and quickly received the information I needed to accurately draft the Greenberg Gardens section of Forbes Field as it was in ‘47.

Spring of ‘23 brought a table of contents that included a story on the “replacement Tigers” who took the field for a single game when the Detroit team went on strike in 1910, a couple great 19th century baseball features, and one on the evolution of the fielder’s glove. However, the article on unofficial no-hitters grabbed my attention.

My father loved to tell me baseball stories from his youth growing up in the late 1950s and early 60s. I learned about players like Warren Spahn, Minnie Minoso, and Johnny Podres from him. But one story he told me as a kid always stuck with me – Harvey Haddix’s no no-hitter. I remember my dad telling me how he listened to the last few innings on the radio as Haddix threw inning after inning of perfect ball against the Milwaukee Braves. Then, finally in the bottom of the 13th inning his perfecto was spoiled with a fielding error. A walk to Hank Aaron followed but Haddix still had a no-hitter going. But that didn’t last as Joe Adcock hit one out of the park to end the game. Poor Harvey lost his perfect game, his no-hitter, and the win.

When my father told me the story of that game – and he did more than once over the years – I always pictured Haddix brightly illuminated by the stadium lights, standing alone on the mound as he watched the Braves players round the bases and put an end to his masterpiece. So, the Spring 2023 BRJ cover star was Harvey Haddix with an assist from my Pop.

Cover number seven was another one of those automatic choices – Ty Cobb. For some reason I had never done a portrait of Cobb from his big-league days, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so. And, since the article in the BRJ was about the name “Tyrus,” I had to work “TY” into the illustration.

My most recent cover featured the iconic scoreboard in Birmingham’s Rickwood Field. The reason for the article about Rickwood in that issue of BRJ was MLB playing a regular season game at the historic ballpark.

Besides being one of the older parks in the country, Rickwood has been featured in the movies “Cobb,” “Soul of the Game,” and “42.” While the quality of those pictures can be debated, what can’t is the visual beauty of the old park. And for me, the highlight is the scoreboard. The black and white starkness and simplicity makes it a hit in my book, and a natural cover star for BRJ.

And if you look at the top right of the scoreboard, you’ll see my old buddy, Charlie Vascellero. I was with Charlie back in 2002 when I saw Rickwood in person for the first time. And now more than 2-decades later, Charlie was returning to Rickwood as a member of the press for the upcoming MLB game.

Well, that brings me to a few weeks ago when the first chilly morning of the year here in Kentucky brought Cecilia Tan’s email with the table of contents for the Fall 2024 Baseball Research Journal. Scanning the articles, one legendary name leaped up at me:

SATCHEL PAIGE.

Tomorrow, we’ll get the pencil out and begin to get into creating the new cover for the Baseball Research Journal.