The Conlon Card Collection

Charles Conlon was a photographer that worked ballparks in New York for much of the first 40 years of the 20th century. Obviously, he took a lot of pictures of New York-based ballplayers, but all baseball teams made trips to New York several times a year, so he was able to get pictures of many visiting ballplayers during these four decades as well.

The story of what happened to the negatives of all these pictures is an interesting one worth reading (Link). Regardless, The Sporting News ended up with them and in the early 1990's published two 330 card sets and a 110 card set consisting of pictures from Charles Conlon. I purchased those sets at the time, but the promised five-set release never came to fruition, so that's all there is. If you follow the links above you can see there is plenty of legal turmoil around these cards still today - too bad. (Jack Russell)

I am using snapshots of these cards as artwork to spice up the blog entries. So far my photography skills have been a bit shaky, but I will get better. The point is to not only inject a little color into the blog (black and white are both colors) but a little history as well. This is also a gentle reminder that the players referenced in these pictures are not just pieces of cardboard or just bits on a hard drive, but were real people who struggled to reach the pinnacle of the game. Some went to the Hall-of-Fame, some just got their proverbial cup of coffee and were gone. (Chick Fullis)

As to the pictures themselves, they will all be of players from the 1930 season, although the picture itself may have been taken during a different year (there is a date given on the card front), and maybe while the player was on a different team. There is not a picture/card for every player in the 1930 season, and I certainly won't pictorially represent every player from this season, but that's not the goal. Again, it's just a bit of color and a bit of history to go along with the replay as it progresses.