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Posted By: Scott Forrest

Looks like an equal number of bowlers and straw hats, so maybe it's about when the straw hats were taking off, around 1910 I think (but looking on the internet, I couldn't get a more exact date), as opposed to later when almost everyone wore them ("8 men out"), or the first decade of the century when everyone was still wearing bowlers. I always look at the hats.

It doesn't help with this photo, but a dead give-away can be stirrups. I've seen many photos on ebay advertised as 1800's, but players are wearing stirrups, which weren't popular until about 1920. Before then they wore something that was sort of a "cro-magnon stirrup", with elastic at the bottom, but the sock went into the shoe and a flap on the front covered the sock beneath. I have a pair if anyone is curious what they look like.

Also, what about the photography technique? Wouldn't that push it out to 1910+?