Brearley Banter

holiday shopping

my mother susan and i were up bright and early friday morning for the unofficial holiday shopping kickoff better known as black friday. early morning rain yielded to sunny skies in the afternoon and we had a nice crowd at our faneuil hall marketplace store. there were plenty of folks browsing our selection of ted williams baseball photos but our historic boston street scene photographs were by far the biggest attraction of the day. our image of the hindenburg over boston is always a show stopper. we knew the general facts surounding the photo such as the fact that the image was from the morning of the same day it exploded in lakehurst, new jersey. however, through the years visitors to our store have shared some other great facts about the ill-fated dirigible. i was told by a lifelong boston resident that the hindenburg had circled boston for a better part of the late morning into the afternoon. this was due to inclement weather south of massachusetts towards lakehurst. this gentleman told me he remembers being in school and all the kids, and teacher, in his class ran to the window to see the huge air ship. he went on to tell me that later in the day he was outside playing baseball and the blimp passed over again. such an historic event made even more interesting with that great story. my father, and founder of the brearley collection, always told us that our photos were "conversation pieces". the meaning of that expression didn't quite sink in until i grew up and became involved in the day to day operations. 

Bob Montgomery & Denny Doyle

I recently had a great time searching the archives for the autograph show featuring the 1975 Red Sox. I've done quite a few searches for the more popular players like Jim Rice, Fred Lynn, Luis Tiant, etc., but it's the lesser known players that I really get a kick out of finding a nice image of. For example, I came across a nice shot of Bob Montgomery at bat in his last season (1979). It reminded me that he was the last active player that Major League Baseball allowed to bat without wearing a batting helmet.

I also came across a shot of the infamous moment from the 1975 world series when Denny Doyle was tagged out at home after an apparent miscommunication with third base coach Don Zimmer. Doyle claims to have heard "GOGOGO" from Zimmer and Zimmer claims to have told Doyle "NONONO". Needless to say, Doyle was out by 30 feet.

At the signing I asked Denny to inscribe the phrase "I Heard Go" on the photo. Mr. Doyle politely declined, and said to me "I wish we had more time to discuss and debate the truth behind this event." He proceeded to write "GO" in bold letters below his signature on the photo. I take this as an indication of his strong belief that GO was the message relayed to him that night and the mistake was made by Zimmer (but we'll never know).