Color in a Black and White World

[Dave Grob]

One of the things I enjoy most about vintage baseball uniforms is that they provide “contextual color” to what was otherwise a black and white world. Unless you lived in proximity to a major league city (and prior to 1953, there were only eleven of them) what you saw of the game was largely through black and white images in newspapers or news reels. It is not difficult to visualize the ball being white, shoes being black, with bats and gloves being various hues of brow… but what about those uniforms?
Dave Grob

[Hot Springs Bathers]

Wow! Great stuff, can't wait for the book!

[Dave Grob]

Thanks, but this was not a "book pimp" post. In retrospect, I wish we would have gone to greater lengths to reinforce this point in our effort, but I think it does come across in any number of places.

Dave Grob

[Scott Garner]

Dave,
I couldn't agree more about the interesting juxtaposition between B /W and the reality of color in earlier baseball. I've actually thought a lot about this as a collector.

[earlywynnfan]

Excellent!! Wasn't expecting the Giants' lettering to be blue!

[Dave Grob]

I wish we would have tried our hand at some photographs like this.

Dave Grob

[shernan30]

Pretty awesome!!


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[horzverti]

Great stuff! I would love to see more if you have some ready to post.
Thanks Dave

[Dave Grob]

It is very natural to think of the Pittsburgh Pirates in black and yellow because that is what we became accustomed to seeing with the proliferation of color photography.

Dave Grob

[CW]

Very cool concept, Dave, with the paired up photos.

Also reminded me a bit of this cartoon...

[steve B]

cool stuff.

Color photography existed in different forms from 1861 on, with the first commercially sold color photography system coming in about 1907.

It was a European system, so I doubt there's any baseball pictures that exist.
The oldest Color baseball film I have is from I think 1946, although mid 30's would have been possible since Kodachrome came out in 1935 (the name was used earlier for a 2 color film that wasn't terrible but wasn't all that great either -1917 til...? )


Steve B

[Bobmc]

Fascinating thread, Dave.
Thank you very much for sharing.

[bigfanNY]

Dave thanks so much for sharing the uniforms I have always liked these because they bring history to Life.