Rudy Mancuso Gets Justice in the End

Rudy Mancuso, The Shot Heard 'Round the World

"The Man Who Shot 'the Shot Heard 'Round the World,'" by Joshua Prager of The Wall Street Journal, is a touching story. Photographer Rudy Mancuso, who took a famous baseball photograph, lost track of his negative and never got credit for his picture over the years, only to have both restored to him at the very end of his life. A good short read and a nice tale of justice and vindication for one photographer.

Mike
(Thanks to John Camp, Josh Prager and others)

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Featured Comment by Joshua Prager: "Hello. A friend just alerted me to your blog post about my article. Thank you!

"I read your reader comments and thought I could help answer some of the questions. First, the ball is indeed visible. It is about half-way between home plate and third base, just a few feet in fair play. (I have the ball circled in my book.) Second, I agree that it is by no means baseball's greatest photograph. What I wrote is that it is arguably baseball's most famous photo and that the moment it preserved was baseball's greatest. Third, the newspapers did not at first run the photograph. But after it appeared in the New York Giants yearbook and those ads, it gained steam and began popping up in countless written accounts of the game. And finally, I have a chapter in my book (Chapter 17) describing how the baseball writers scrounged about for ways to properly describe the game and its meaning. In this chapter I discuss how it came to be called 'The shot heard round the world.'

"P.S. I have a great respect for photography. Your readers might be interested to know that I was the reporter who in 2006 identified the only anonymous winner in the history of the Pulitzer Prize—the Iranian photographer Jahangir Razmi. That article is on my website."

Featured Comment by William Barnett-Lewis: "Thank you for the link. It's good to know that sometimes things can end right, at least.

"That image is a good, evocative image but I'd suggest reading this for the story of what I consider the greatest baseball photograph of them all."

Comments

[mcananeya]

Good story! But it isn't clear from the article if the newspapers actually ran his picture after claiming to pass. Did they?

Best,
Adam

[Chris Klug]

Man, what a great story. I've seen that image a thousand times, and to think he never got a penny, well, I just don't know what to say. Thanks for linking to this.

[Eolake Stobblehouse]

I was always confused about how people can get so emotionally aroused by sports that a moment in a sports game can become known as "the Shot Heard 'Round the World".

[Rod]

An interesting story, with lessons for photographers. However, as an Australian, I'm outside the culture. I was puzzled by the significance of the hit and its title, so found this page useful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_Heard_%27Round_the_World_(baseball)

Still, can somebody explain why Mansuso's photograph is "arguably the most famous photograph in the history of baseball"? In all that time since, has no one else hit a home run to decide a game?

Secondly, the article says that "Mancuso had stilled a Spalding some 280 feet before it cleared a green wall". Can the ball be seen in this reproduction; if so, where is it? Otherwise can somebody supply a link?

Thanks!

[Eolake Stobblehouse]

All right, I apologize to sports lovers. I just could never see it myself, is all.

[Matt Kallio]

It's a nice story. For you who don't know baseball, the event in 1951 was a spectacular home run (and true, there have been many others before and since), but the photo is by no means the greatest baseball photograph. I always thought this one was:

http://mopupduty.com/baseballprints//catalog/images/cobb12.jpg

This is truly a great sports picture, with the umpire completing the composition in the background, and Cobb's expression of determination that matches the flying dirt.

[ObiJohn]

Sheesh... even I have a better baseball picture than that...

The Winning Hit

[hugh crawford]

A cynic would say that the "Shot Heard 'Round the World" would be more aptly called the "Shot Heard Across Two Boroughs of the City of New York" and that the New York newspapers felt that that was close enough to around the world for all practical purposes.
I have heard that the fact that GI's around the world were listening to the game on armed forces radio may have had something to do with the "Heard 'Round the World" however.

Or maybe it was just a way of tweaking the Boston Red Sox , since the "Shot Heard around the World" usually describes an event in Concord, Massachusetts that led to the revolutionary war.

BTW, an interesting bit of baseball and American revolutionary war trivia: The site of the first and bloodiest battle of the United States army in the revolutionary war, is also the site of the first and third baseball playing fields for the Brooklyn Dodgers (Ebbets Field was the fourth).
Oh, and now it's a Museum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Stone_House_(Brooklyn)
and I just happen to currently have an exhibition of photographs hanging there.
http://hughcrawford.com/essenceandaccident

[kevin]

Baseball really was the "national pastime" back in the day. This particular pennant race was a real nail-biter and came down to a one-game playoff. If we don't quite get it, well, I guess you had to be there.

[Mark S+]

Does this mean that the WSJ actually published a photograph?

[NY'er]

From New York.
Almost 40.
First time I've seen this picture.

Just sayin'

[Wilhelm]

Baseball sucks -- NASCAR rocks!

[Carl Blesch]

I'm not much of a sports fan or a sports photographer, but I do have a sports shot that I cherish - of a University of Wisconsin hockey player firing a shot against Boston University goaltender Jim Craig in the 1978 NCAA hockey tournament semifinals. In my photo, the puck had just cleared Craig's glove and was flying into the net. This was far from a shot heard 'round the world, being an early goal in a game that BU ultimately won. And as we know, how many people besides those at a handful of schools like Wisconsin really give a damn about college hockey??? But for me and my rabid fan buddies, my shot was a keeper because it showed our team scoring against a player who two years later would become a national hero. In the 1980 Olympics, Craig stopped 36 of 39 shots on goal (source - Wikipedia article) to help the USA defeat the USSR in the "Miracle on Ice" game. One game later, the USA beat Finland to bring home gold. My shot will never bring me money or fame, but it inspires memories and fuels camaraderie to this day.
Carl