Tuesday, September 6, 2011

MUST-HAVE PAST-BLAST

Thanks to Dave Davis for some highly welcome semi-self-promotion: his essay on Neal and Constance McCabe's follow-up volume to their classic Baseball's Golden Age: The Photographs of Charles M. Conlon (1993) over at the Smithsonian Magazine web site is perfect reading as we move into that bittersweet part of the baseball season.

It's the same every year. Autumn beckons, so much is already past, so little is left to come...and the Conlon photos in the McCabe's new collection, The Big Show, bring that past back to us with grace and gusto.

At the Smithsonian Magazine site you will also find an enjoyable photo essay that the ever-engaging Mr. Davis has compiled from the McCabe's new volume.

One of the great features of the new book is the compilation of photos giving us an incomparable look at a series of obscure and all-but-forgotten ballplayers who would be nothing but disembodied names were it not for the camera of Charles Conlon.