Quote:
Originally Posted by Amazin69
I'm surprised that the Pilots team picture is considered a novelty; Bouton's had the black & white version in the back of Ball Four for generations, and I wouldn't have thought the color version was hard to find.
Bouton: "You may notice that most of the faces are in shadow. This is because a cameraman with lights cost extra. You may also notice that the manager and coaches are seated left of center. We even had trouble taking pictures."
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I'm well aware that the B&W appears in Bouton's book (and would presume that Merkle is as well). The B&W.
The COLOR image--which is different than the B&W--had never ever been seen before until about 2011 or 2012. The B&W is readily available, as I said in my post. The color image is utterly unavailable.
I suspect the Pilots only ordered black & white prints from that shoot (cheaper than color). And those b&w pictures made the rounds through concession sales and press materials and then reproductions. They are clearly out there in numbers. The B&W. Merkle's point was that there were NO known COLOR images of Garry Roggenburk (or Gordy Lund) as a Pilot....until this very small jpeg surfaced just a few years ago (we always knew, or suspected, that the B&W team photo was the only existing image of Garry as a Pilot at all).
But, with the surfacing of the small color jpeg, we now know that such an image exists and we are all hopeful that a larger/full size COLOR image can be tracked down. Clearly, the shoot was in color. We didn't know this before. (The "other" team picture has always been out there in color, so nobody went looking for this one in color.)
Imagine discovering (all these years after the fact), via a tiny jpeg online, that the team issued head shot of Billy Williams was originally shot in color (it wasn't). Even if it was otherwise the same picture as the B&W, would it not be newsworthy? Would you not then want to get a full-sized image of the color head shot of Williams? This is sort of like that.
I posted the B&W team image so people could see the faces (my eyes are shot; all I see in the smaller color picture is a big blob). And also to point out that the color image is likely an outtake and, therefore, not available through the usual suspects; you won't see it turning up on eBay and people associated with the team probably never saw it (other than on a contact sheet, if that).
EDIT: OK. Just did a little roaming around online and discovered that the posted color image that I had found (posted to the net in 2011) is part of the David Eskenazi collection. He's a SABR member, a collector, and a writer. If that helps anyone shake loose the original, God bless you.