Both cartoons were printed in the March 4 edition of the LA Examiner, an issue that was in pretty bad shape on the microfilm; lot of restoration work but the results are still sub-par I’m afraid.
Up top we have Herriman commemorating an exhibition game between the New York Giants and the Angels. The New Yorkers were all complaining about being stiff and tired after their 3000 mile rail journey and so only beat the Angels by a pair. Anyone have an idea who this Samivel (Samuel?) Crane fellow is?
The second cartoon, an editorial, has Herriman complaining about the DA’s apparent lack of interest in the Examiner’s charges of corruption in LA’s road-building endeavors. Why George feels the need to credit Jimmy Swinnerton on this cartoon is a mystery to me.
PS – the images above are PNG graphics rather than JPGs. If anyone has trouble viewing them or notices any other odd behavior please let me know.
Samuel Crane was both a baseball player of the 1880s and, later on, an influential sports journalist, which probably explains the folks hanging on his every word.
(Apols if this is repeated…comment thing acting odd.)
This is a story, a colourful one, about Crane from an 1889 New York Times article…
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9507E0D81030E633A2575BC1A96E9C94689FD7CF
I believe these are his career stats, though for some reason the 1889 stats don’t show up:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/c/cranesa01.shtml
If you google him, there’s a ref to him testifying at a baseball player’s trial late in the teens.
Yet another source: Crane was apparently very influential in baseball, indeed:
http://www.robertedwardauctions.com/auction/2007/854.html
Last one, I promise. This has the revealing fact that Crane worked for the New York Journal, another Hearst-owned paper.
http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?t=57538
Hi EO –
Thanks for the info and links. Kinda feel dumb not to have thought to look him up in the Baseball Encyclopedia. Ah well…
–Allan