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Wonderful exploration by Joe Capozzi of a photograph that captured the capturing of a World Series 50 years ago, featuring Steve Blass, Manny Sanguillen and Rusty Kennedy.
IT UNFOLDED IN the blink of a photographer's eye.
Catcher Manny Sanguillen running for joy, raising his glove and mask in glory. Suddenly, into the frame came pitcher Steve Blass, knees rising to his chest, arms reaching for the sky.
Watching through a 600mm lens, 400 feet away on a platform riser behind the centerfield wall at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium, Rusty Kennedy was about to press the shutter button on his Nikon when he noticed a fatal flaw in the frame.
Blass was blurry.
It was Oct. 17, 1971, 50 years ago this month, 29 years before cameras were first added to cell phones and about 15 before Nikon cameras were first adapted with a technological advancement called autofocus.
Kennedy, a young Associated Press photographer, had a split-second to react.
Somehow, he was able to manually adjust the focus and fire the shutter just in time to capture poetry in motion, a masterpiece not unlike a classic Renaissance painting, as the celebrated essayist Roger Angell would eloquently write.
There were other dramatic photographs taken at the 1971 World Series, but none would carry the emotional clout of Kennedy's euphoric shot of Blass and Sanguillen celebrating like crazed kids in the initial moments after the underdog Pittsburgh Pirates knocked off the favored Baltimore Orioles.
The picture would find its way to the walls of countless taverns, offices and dens across western Pennsylvania and beyond over the next 50 years, joining James Klingensmith's iconic photograph of Bill Mazeroski's 1960 home run as reminders of the greatness that once defined Pittsburgh's baseball team.
For one of the men in the photo, it would offer a source of comfort after his on-field tribulations gave way to gut-wrenching trials that ended his career just three years later.
And for Kennedy's photography peers, it would offer inspiration and awe.
“It's a timeless photo, absolutely timeless,'' said George Widman, a longtime AP photographer and Pulitzer Prize finalist. “It's like that famous speech James Earl Jones gives about baseball in (the movie) 'Field of Dreams.' That's what that picture is.''
Perhaps most remarkable was Kennedy's ability, in a rapidly fleeting window of opportunity, to get Blass into focus and capture the image.
“It's a picture that's very difficult to make,'' said Brian Horton, a former AP senior photo editor who oversaw the agency's global sports photo coverage. "From a photographer's standout, it's just a freaking miracle is what it is.''
And it all started with Kennedy being in the right place at the right time.
Except in his case, the right place happened to be about as far from the action as a photographer could be. |
https://www.byjoecapozzi.com/post/the-freaking-miracle-of-the-iconic-1971-world-series-photograph-that-nearly-wasn-t
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