Major League Baseball, 1903 to 1952 [Hand-drawn map]
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By Bill Turianski on the 30th of June 2023; twitter.com/billsportsmaps.
Billsportsmaps.com had its 15th year anniversary, on the 17th of August 2022. So I am posting a series of maps from the early days of this blog. This hand-drawn map was originally posted in November 2007.
Major League Baseball, 1903 to 1952 [Hand-drawn map]
Between 1903 and 1952, there was no franchise movement among the 8 National League and 8 American League baseball clubs. This map shows all the 16 MLB clubs from that time period, with emblems, cap crests and uniform details. Included is an inset map of the Greater New York City area. In the inset map, the locations of Yankee Stadium (NY Yankees), the Polo Grounds (NY Giants), and Ebbets Field (Brooklyn Dodgers) are marked. The evolution of these three NYC clubs’ crests and the evolution of the three ball clubs’ colors are also shown here.
This map would not have been possible without the incredible book “Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century” {at Amazon, here}. That book was researched, written, and illustrated by Marc Okkonen. His artwork for this book can now be found as the main uniform database (from 1900 to 1994) for the Baseball Hall of Fame site “Dressed to the Nines – A History of the Baseball Uniform”…{exhibits.baseballhalloffame.org/dressed_to_the_nines/database}
I made this map in early 1993, after my brothers had given me, for Christmas, the now-out-of-print “Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century” by Marc Okkonen. I used Caran d’Ache watercolor pencils and graphite pencil, on Bienfang semi-transparent paper. In 2023, I added the banner at the top of the map.
