Baseball Lore and Trivia

[imref]

Heard this earlier and figured it was a good thread starter:

The origin of the word "Bullpen": The legend is that it's from when Bull Durham Tobacco used to put signs in ballparks in the early 1900s.  The signs were used to shade the area where the pitchers warmed up.  There are other explanations but that one seems to have stuck.

[dcpatti]

Bleachers got their name from the bleached-white appearance of wood after it sat in the sun for a long time. Only the richies could afford seats in the shade and the poors sat in the bleachers and got sunburn.

[welch]

Bleachers got their name from the bleached-white appearance of wood after it sat in the sun for a long time. Only the richies could afford seats in the shade and the poors sat in the bleachers and got sunburn.

Evidence: imagine being a Nats fan before night games, a WW2 innovation in DC: if you got a bleacher ticket, you got bleached.

[welch]

The baseball: before Detroit's Ray Chapman was beaned and killed in 1920, the game went on no matter what the condition of the ball. It was rare to change the game ball...unless Washington's Walter Johnson was pitching. Johnson insisted on a clean baseball because he wanted the ball to go where he threw it. (info from Hank Thomas's biography of his grandfather, which every Nats fan should read:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Johnson-Baseballs-Big-Train-ebook/dp/B00O3Q5NTA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1504456619&sr=8-1&keywords=Henry+thomas+walter+johnson

[tomterp]

Bleachers got their name from the bleached-white appearance of wood after it sat in the sun for a long time. Only the richies could afford seats in the shade and the poors sat in the bleachers and got sunburn.

Evidence: imagine being a Nats fan before night games, a WW2 innovation in DC: if you got a bleacher ticket, you got bleached.

You need to give fans more credit than that.  A properly attired fan had very little exposed skin.  This from Griffith Stadium in 1924:

[welch]

You need to give fans more credit than that.  A properly attired fan had very little exposed skin.  This from Griffith Stadium in 1924:

(Image removed from quote.)

Ah, but that looks like the picture of Babe Ruth in front of the RF grandstand. Someplace there's a picture of fans in the LF bleachers trying to see where Mantle's 565 foot home run landed. Not many people up there. Best I remember, you had to be a ten-year-old kid to want to sit in the bleachers for a day-game after opening day. Great place to collect batting practice baseballs, though, in 1959 and 1960.

[welch]

Ah...here are some pictures:

http://baseball.physics.illinois.edu/Krannert-v3.pdf

The picture is on page 5, right side. This is mid-April, before DC gets its full summertime heat/humidity. (The other picture on p. 5 is only to show the likely trajectory of the ball. Mantle hit RH when he hit the tape-measure shot...lefty Churck Stobbs was pitching.)
 

[tomterp]

Ah, but that looks like the picture of Babe Ruth in front of the RF grandstand. Someplace there's a picture of fans in the LF bleachers trying to see where Mantle's 565 foot home run landed. Not many people up there. Best I remember, you had to be a ten-year-old kid to want to sit in the bleachers for a day-game after opening day. Great place to collect batting practice baseballs, though, in 1959 and 1960.

Yep, that's the Babe.  He woke up from his unconscious state sufficiently to have 2 more hits in the game, then played the second game of the double headers as well.  So much for concussion protocol.

This was down in the "negro" section but the crowd appeared to be quite integrated.