[Merkle923]

Unless the primary ID is mistaken, this is not just a shot of the scene just seconds before the most infamous play in baseball history, but evidence that the most famous photographer in baseball history was there - and missed the shot of the most infamous play in baseball history.

A SABR member named Alex Cheremeteff who spends a lot of time on photos posted this on Twitter yesterday. Origin: a collection of photos by the famed Charles Conlon in the Ernie Harwell Collection at the Detroit Public Library. Marked on the reverse only as "Frank Chance 1908."

I've been studying the Merkle game since I was a teenager and even then (and well before) it was conceded that there were no known images of the game itself. They might have proved invaluable into the National League investigation of the play (which was so serious and so traumatic that it eventually pushed the N.L. president over the edge, and to suicide). There was one photo published in a non-sports magazine a few weeks later, but that seemed to be taken from the stands at the Polo Grounds right after the Merkle play occurred and showed what looks like the aftermath of the crazed spectacle that had broken out (I'll spare you the details; done justice they merit a few hundred pages).

But Cheremeteff was struck by the image of the Giant player here. He's convinced it's Merkle and so am I. The nose is the giveaway. In any event, the photo certainly can only date to 1908 (the only year the Giants wore a dark cap at home with the simple version of the "NY" on the sleeve; the only year the Cubs wore those road pinstripes with dark undershirts or sweatshirts). That's clearly the Polo Grounds (it's an unusual angle for photography at the park, but that ad for "Luna Park" is the clincher - that was an over-the-top amusement park in Coney Island that opened in 1903).

So if it's 1908 and we're in New York and that's Fred with Frank Chance, Cheremeteff determined that there were only two times all year Merkle would have been reached first - and both were during the world-changing game of September 23. The first was when he walked in the 3rd to give the Giants runners on first and second - and to give Chance no reason to hold him on the bag. The second was when Merkle's two-out single sent Harry McCormick to third base with the potential winning run in the bottom of the ninth of the 1-1 tie.

Of course, Chance shouldn't be holding him on the bag here, either. His run is meaningless. But there are three considerations: the next batter, Al Bridwell, was left-handed; Bridwell recalled seeing Merkle taking too long a lead off first and had to step out and wave him back to the bag; and we may actually be seeing Chance coming off the bag to increase his possibility for lateral motion in case Bridwell pulled the ball sharply.

So here's the kicker. Bridwell connected on the first pitch, scoring McCormick and sending Merkle not to second but to the Giants' clubhouse, which required a hard right somewhere before he got to the next base, and sending them all into infamy when the Cubs convinced the umpires to call him out and nullify the run in this game with the two teams virtually tied for first place.

And Charles Conlon missed it.

If he photographed Merkle inching off the bag in the bottom of the ninth on September 23, 1908, he had to have almost immediately thereafter closed up his heavy, cumbersome camera and begun to move off the field just as Bridwell singled. While the most famous rhubarb in sports history unfolded, Conlon had to have been moving away from it, trying to lug the camera and the glass plates he had exposed that day safely off the field.

Bridwell's hit, Merkle not reaching second, McCormick scoring, the crowd pouring out of the stands, the Cubs refusing to leave the field, the Giants dragging Merkle back from the clubhouse to touch second, rival pitchers Joe McGinnity and Floyd Kroh wrestling for the ball, McGinnity throwing it into the stands, Johnny Evers somehow producing a new baseball and tagging second with it, umpires Hank O'Day and Bob Emslie ruling an hour later that Merkle was out - Conlon missed it the way those folks in the parking lot that you see suddenly jamming on their brake lights in highlights of Game 1 of the 1988 World Series missed Kirk Gibson's homer.

So not only is this an image from "the Merkle game" taken just seconds before the most dissected play in history but it suggests that the story that there are no photos of it isn't just wrong, it may have been deliberate. Because if you're Charles Conlon, do you really want anybody to know "Oh, yeah, I photographed that game but I left with two out in the bottom of the ninth"?