A Picture's Worth

A Picture’s Worth

 

Three or four times a week I check eBay for photos of Comiskey Park.  Every so often, I get lucky and come across snapshots from before I was born even.  Tuesday may be the first time I ever saw a picture that made me mad.

 

It’s a news photo from June 1990 and, technically, not of Comiskey Park; bear with me here.  Robin Ventura and Carlton Fisk are modeling their 1917 replica uniforms for the first-ever “Turn Back the Clock” game, played July 11^th.  I was at that game, but they didn’t turn the clock all the way back—both the White Sox and Brewers used their black players.  We can’t have the past teach us any lessons, now could we?

 Let’s say get back to Ventura and Fisk.  They’re standing in the middle of Comiskey Park II/U.S. Cellular Field/Guaranteed Rate Whatever, still under construction.  The team had no further use of the park from 1917 but still wanted to play dress-up.  Two ballplayers standing in the middle of a concrete bowl—they’re right about a picture being worth a thousand