Newspaper cartoonist Claude Shafer (1878-1962) found the fight for first place in the National League in the 1920 baseball season interesting enough to dedicate a cartoon to. The Cincinnati based cartoonist, creator of Old Man Grump, was a Reds fan and saw his team battle for a place in the World Series with the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Robins.
The Sketch
The original sketch has seen better days. It has quite some water marks and mold. It’s approximately 14x8-1/4” (35,5x20,9 cm) and signed by Shafer on the bottom right corner. It features Old Man Grump sitting in a boat, fishing while smoking a corn cob pipe. Below the hook with worms and a card saying ‘first place’ three fish jump out of the water. They all have a ‘name’: Reds, N.Y. and Brook. Grump addresses the reader: ‘Look! In all yer life did ya ever see ‘em bite like that?’
The Season
When you look up the 1920 season the three teams were closest at the beginning of September. On September 5th, for instance, Brooklyn was on 73-55 (0.5 up), Cincinnati on 71-54 and New York on 71-57 . At the end of that month, though, the Reds would be 9.5 games behind, the Giants 5. The Robins would go on and face and lose to the Indians in the World Series.
Why buy a century old drawing from a Reds fan? I think it's a nice peek into the history of the Dodgers. On the brink of their second World Series appearance in 4 years. It would be quite some time before they would reach again (1941). It predates the first Yankees win, Jackie Robinson was far away and Branch Rickey was still with the Cardinals and exactly 100 years later the Dodgers would win their 7th World Series title. I really like that way of looking at history.
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