Category Archives: Art

It’s Opening Day!

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Today is the day that I look forward to every year.  It’s the opening day of the 2018 MLB season!  For nearly 150 years, baseball has been America’s pastime.  Long before Andre Beltre and Mike Trout thrilled baseball fans with every swing of the bat, there were players like Hardy Richardson.

From 1875 until he retired in 1892, Hardy Richardson was one of the best players in major league baseball.  He played for 14 seasons and for 6 different teams.  When he was playing for Detroit, he led the team to victory in the 1887 World Series.  He played every single position and his stats would make any player proud.  Richardson appeared in 1,331 major league games, compiled a .299 batting average and .435 slugging percentage, and totaled 1,120 runs scored, 1,688 hits, 303 doubles, 126 triples, 70 home runs, 822 RBIs, and 377 bases on balls.

Richardson was also one of the first players known to have appeared on a baseball card.  In 1887, if you bought a pack of Old Judge cigarettes, you could also get a baseball card celebrating the career of Hardy Richardson.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

It’s been over a hundred years since Hardy Richardson last swung a bat or stole a base but both his legacy and the legacy of everyone else who has ever played the game will continue today as the teams hit the field for the first time.  Good luck to all the players on Opening Day!

GO RANGERS!

The Covers of Mammoth Detective

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

33 issues of Mammoth Detective were published between 1942 and 1947 and they all lived up to their name.  Initially, an average issue of Mammoth Detective was 322 pages long but eventually, it was reduced down to 178 pages.  That was still too many pages for the magazine survive the paper shortages of World War II.

Mammoth Detective cover artists included Robert Gibson Jones, Harold McCauley, and James Axelrod.  Check out some samples of their work below:

Unknown Artist

Unknown Artist

Unknown Artist

by Robert Gibson Jones

by Robert Gibson Jones

by Robert Gibson Jones

by James Axlerod

by Harold McCauley

60 Years Ago, My Grandfather Took This Picture Of Elvis Presley

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

On March 24th, 1958, 23 year-old Elvis Presley reported for his induction into the army.  It was a day that the press and his fans dubbed as being Black Monday.  Shortly after being inducted, Elvis and his fellow recruits were transported to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas.  That’s where my grandfather, Raymond Ellis, took this picture.

Unfortunately, the copy above is not a great scan.  (When my Dad got his first scanner in 1995, the Elvis picture was one of the first things he scanned.  I just happened to come across it a few weeks ago while I was gong through some old 3.5 floppy disks.)  Hopefully, I’ll be able to get my hands on the original and share a better scan in the future.  As far as I know, this picture of Elvis has never been published anywhere else.

As for Elvis, he served in the army for two years, getting promoted to sergeant and receiving an honorable discharge in 1960.   He spent most of his army career in West Germany, where he met the woman that he would eventually marry, Priscilla Beaulieu.