Obtaining new scans of Dummy Hoy cards, etc.

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Posted By: Matthew S. Moore

Ms. Birkholm . . . thanks! Iit's nice to have magazine clips, but they wouldn't be publishable because a) there'd likely be a copyright problem, since Time-Warner probably still owns the rights to LIFE photos; and 2) I'm trying to track own real photos (and original negatives) and/or high-resolution digital scans made from them. Reproducing printed images (as second- or third-generation images) results in an obtrusive moiré effect (that diagonal-checkerboard-like pattern seen on badly reproduced and degraded photos), and there'd be a noticeable loss in clarity and quality of the image.

I can contact Time-Warner, Getty Images, Corbis-Bettmann, and other sources about that. Photo agencies typically charge exorbitant prices for their photos, though . . . a BIG problem for us. We've obtained some good photos from "Sporting News" and the Giamatti Library at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

We may be using some poor-quality photos in the Hoy book (for lack of anything better), but we're scrupulously trying to avoid them as much as possible. It isn't always possible to avoid using third-generation photos; we've purchased several from the Gallaudet University Archives. These are acceptable when there's nothing better available—or when we can't find any other photographs of a particular person, especially one who wasn't in the limelight of celebrity.

One set of photos that I've agonized over show Hoy and "Dummy" Taylor at a Deaf Community softball tournament on Labor Day Weekend in 1942. I have no idea what happened to the originals. Two fuzzy, murky photos were published in Ralph LinWeber's "American Deaf Softball Guide" (1961). I have a disked scan from the book, but the quality of the images is atrocious. And these are, to the best of my knowledge, the ONLY pictures ever taken of Hoy and Taylor together.

Mr. Sloate, thanks for your response, too. I wasn't aware that Hoy threw out the first ball for the Minnesota Twins. Do you have that on record?