It was just another routine regular season game that would have been long forgotten by now except for one thing: On the field that day, standing behind third base, was a photographer named Charles Conlon. And through sheer luck, the 40-something Conlon took what would prove to be one of baseball’s most famous photographs.
The iconic image shows Ty Cobb, the legendary Georgia Peach, kicking up a cloud of dirt as he slides hard into third base, manned by New York’s Jimmy Austin. In the distance, umpire Silk O’Loughlin signals safe.The 23-year-old Cobb clenches his teeth, his face a study in intensity.
It is “no doubt the most famous baseball photo ever taken,” Cobb biographer Al Stump wrote.
MORE: Classic Ty Cobb images | Historic Conlon baseball photos
(Photo by Charles M. Conlon/Sporting News. The cropped image at top is the best known version of the picture. The full version below was never published until 1993, when it was included in a book published by Sporting News.)
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The photograph is notable in part because action shots were difficult to capture with the photographic equipment of the day. Consider this: When Conlon took the picture, he was under the hood of a bulky, tripod-supported Graflex camera like the one seen here. After snapping a shot, he had to change plates. Not ideal for capturing a single moment in a baseball game.
And it almost didn’t happen.
Here’s how Conlon described the moment in Sporting News in 1937:
From 1904 to 1942, Conlon took thousands of baseball photographs, capturing everyone from legends to ordinary players. Many of his images are displayed in the Baseball Hall of Fame. But none of his photos is as famous as the one he snapped “by instinct” 105 years ago today.
