Photographic Reminiscence: Requested Andre Dawson 'to choose up as many bats as he might'

7 months ago 2 min read

Sooner or later throughout the 1980 Main League Baseball season, Gazette photographer John Mahoney was given 5 minutes with Andre Dawson — he was a centre fielder then for the Montreal Expos — earlier than batting follow on the Olympic Stadium “and I needed to do one thing totally different from the usual image,” he recalled.

It was a time earlier than RDS and Sportsnet, earlier than bloggers and earlier than social media, and it was uncommon to see photos of gamers apart from throughout a recreation.

Standing together with his again to the dugout and, with house plate behind Dawson, “I requested him to choose up as many bats as he might. He grabbed half a dozen bats, and your eye is drawn proper to him,” Mahoney recalled.

He used a 20-mm lens, “to get one thing actually large. I needed to make the bats right into a graphic ingredient.”

Dawson “was tremendous good and never attempting to hurry me or something,” Mahoney recalled, though, after two or three minutes, he needed to put the bats down. “It was the awkwardness of attempting to wrap his palms round six bat handles.” Nonetheless, he captured a placing picture: a smiling 6-foot-3 Dawson, holding six bats.

Gazette photographers used movie again then and printed their photographs within the paper’s darkroom. Mahoney initially printed the picture as an 8-by-10-inch picture and submitted it. The sports activities editor on the time was Purple Fisher, who would go on to cowl hockey for the Gazette. Mahoney was 22. “Purple referred to as me over and stated: ‘Hey, Child. Make it larger.’”

Mahoney reprinted the picture as an 11-by-14-inch picture; the next day, it ran throughout the entrance web page of the sports activities part — above the fold.

Dawson performed for 4 groups throughout his 21-year baseball profession and the primary 11 years with the Expos, the place he was extensively thought of one of many recreation’s finest all-around gamers. He retired in 1996 and was inducted into the Baseball Corridor of Fame in 2010.

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