Napoleon Lajoie photo by Louis Van Oeyen

[WillowGrove]

Wow Bill, that's great information.

I checked Marc Okkonen's Uniform book and looking at Indians unis from 1902-1914 when Nap was with them, it has to be a road uniform and is most likely from 1905.

I say most likely because although the shows that year as being gray, the uniform style, hat, and socks match. All the other years either the uniform is different, or the hat and socks dont match.

This said, maybe it was spring training (did Van Oyen travel w the team?) and Nap was wearing any old uniform, or he wore different socks that day, etc.

Hope this helps.

[billyb]

Andrew,
Going through the VanOyen inventory list, there are many unknown players with these photos. It was apparent, VanOyen did not mark all his photos with the players names. After his passing, depending on who handled these photos for listing them in this index, they may not have recognized Lajoie.
So to be on the safe side, I want to send you two other possibilities. The first is in folder #2204, which lists the following.

Unidentified baseball player, Cleveland
Unidentified baseball player, Cleveland, n.d.
Unidentified baseball player, holding a bat, posing for camera.

The second one in Folder #2206 states;

Unidentified baseball player, n.d.
Unidentified baseball player, n.d.
Unidentified baseball player, holding a bat, posing for camera

There is no year for either photo. The first one does sound interesting. It may not help in for what information you are looking for, but who knows.

I noticed that Getty images also has the same photo, just to let you know, many of the VanOyen photos in the VanOyen collection, the image is owned by Getty. Getty bought out all the photos from the Cleveland Press when they folded, but for some reason, many of the images owned by Getty ended up in the WRHS.

I hope this helps, good luck.