The Cleveland Indians: The Cleveland Press Years 1920-1982 (Images of Baseball)

Rating:
Summary: Images of the Indians' Heyday
Review: Baseball and photography grew up together with the still photo reinforcing the memories of the game. Every year seems to bring more books of baseball photographs -- a trend that began with Don Honig's evocative collections and continued through a series of fine art collections like thos of Charles Conlon.
David Borsvold has lovingly compiled a collection of photographs of the Cleveland Indians from the archives of the now-defunct Cleveland Press. The photos cover the heyday of the Indians from 1920 to 1982, the year that the Press folded. The text summarizes the Indians performance by decade (and Cleveland was as successful as any team could be facing the Yankees from the 1920s through the 1950s) while the photographs are the spectrum of daily newspaper fare. There are some rarely seen faces (when's the last time you saw a photo of Wally Westlake?) as well as images of better known players, managers and owners. The action photographs are notably illustrative of the period when cameramen were often a few yards behind homeplate to capture the action.
The book is part of what the publisher is billing as its "Images of Baseball" series. "Cleveland Indians: The Cleveland Press Years, 1920-1982" is a solid beginning to the series.