Filed below:
Listed below are some particulars.
Mears Auctions, which focuses on sports activities, popular culture and Americana memorabilia, has posted an public sale titled: 1945 Chicago Cubs Wrigley Field 30” x 40” We Turn Night Into Day! Ladies Admitted Free Painted Wooden Stadium Sign
Right here’s what the signal appears like:
Nicely, that is very fascinating. First, there’s no query the signal actually appears prefer it’s almost 80 years previous. The public sale description contains this:
Heavy put on to signal with quite a few areas of wooden loss and oxidation to the chain hanging equipment affixed on the prime of the signal.
Additional, I’ve corresponded with Troy Kinunen, president and CEO of Mears Auctions, and he has little question this signal is as previous because the date signifies. He says it got here from a collector who specialised in accumulating stadium artifacts, although there’s no provenance on it from greater than about 10 years in the past.
Second, we all know this for a reality: The Cubs didn’t play any evening video games at Wrigley Subject in 1945, and as we all know, not till 1988 did lights “flip evening into day” at Wrigley. A lot of you understand that the Cubs had ordered metal for gentle towers late in 1941, however when World Warfare II started, crew proprietor P.Ok. Wrigley donated the metal to the warfare effort. I wrote about that here back in 2013.
However, the Cubs did make some makes an attempt to play evening video games in 1942 and 1943, as detailed in this article I posted here in 2020. There’s additional element of those and different makes an attempt in this article in Chicagology, which incorporates this from the Chicago Tribune of Could 9, 1944:
The recreation part of the Warfare Manufacturing Board right now right now turned down the Chicago Cubs’ utility to put in evening baseball services in Wrigley Subject this season, however invited the Cubs to resubmit their request with a view to building for 1945.
George W. McMurphey, director of recreation for the Warfare Manufacturing Board, stated there was nonetheless a chance for extra evening baseball in Chicago if the Cubs used the lighting services of the White Sox Park for a number of video games.
The scarcity of crucial materials and “different components” prompted denial of the Cubs utility by McMurphey. McMurphey stated:
The discharge of supplies alone was not the deciding issue. Whereas supplies could also be out there, this workplace additionally took into consideration that building couldn’t be accomplished earlier than August, which would depart solely 21 weekday dates out there to the Cubs of their residence park.
Beneath such circumstances, the expenditure of fabric and labor doesn’t appear justified for therefore few evening video games.
James T. Gallagher, vp and basic supervisor of the Cubs, stated:
The Cubs will confine their baseball to the daylight; in Chicago this season, not less than. Authorities officers recommended we apply for permission to put in lights at Wrigley Subject and we did so with the concept if we may assist additional the warfare any by allowing these engaged in the course of the day in warfare work to see evening baseball, we might cooperate.
Since we’ve been turned down on our utility there’s nothing left for us to do however proceed our traditional coverage of day time baseball. If we see a necessity for evening baseball subsequent 12 months we might file one other utility. Nevertheless, this new utility won’t be crucial till a while in December. If this utility us granted then we can have time to put in lights earlier than the opening of the 1945 season.
Nevertheless, the Cubs haven’t been, and should not now, bought on evening baseball, however this case might change after the warfare. If there’s a development towards evening baseball after the warfare, we might take some motion then.
I’ve completed an in depth search of newspaper archives from late 1944 via the spring of 1945. There is no such thing as a proof that the Cubs made one other utility to the Warfare Manufacturing Board for evening video games in 1945. Additional, the Chicagology article posted this excerpt from the Tribune of October 21, 1945, and it turned out to be prescient:
Wrigley Subject most likely would be the final outpost of 100 per cent day time baseball. This opinion was ventured yesterday by P. Ok. Wrigley, proprietor and president of the Nationwide League Champions, when he stated there will likely be no lights in his ball park subsequent season.</p>
The New York Yankees’ announcement yesterday that lights will likely be put in of their stadium left solely Wrigley Subject, Fenway Park in Boston, and Briggs Stadium in Detroit with out electrical lights.
”We consider that baseball is a day time sport,” stated Wrigley, “and can proceed to play it within the sunshine so long as we are able to.”
The Cubs final season reported a paid residence attendance of 1,037,026.
Then he recommended that maybe the Cubs would finally wind up as the one membership and not using a lighting plant. He has intimated on previous events that lights could be put in provided that the followers clamored for evening time video games.
Right here’s the possible reply: There have been video games performed with synthetic gentle in Wrigley Subject in 1943 and 1944, however these weren’t Cubs video games — they have been video games performed by gamers from the All-American Women Skilled Baseball League, one as an All-Star Sport (1943), the opposite to lift cash for the Purple Cross (1944). Per this Baseball Hall of Fame article, the lighting was “barely ample.” Nevertheless, no such recreation was performed at Wrigley in 1945.
For now, the conclusion I can draw about this signal is that it may need been made in anticipation of an All-American Women Skilled Baseball League evening recreation at Wrigley Subject in 1945, even perhaps positioned on a wall someplace (thus the rust and put on proven), however the recreation itself was by no means performed. I’ve not, sadly, been capable of find definitive proof of that in newspaper archives. Newspapers again then gave little or no protection to the AAGPBL.
Additionally, keep in mind that in 1945 World Warfare II was nonetheless raging, not less than till spring in Europe, and plenty of journey restrictions have been positioned on US residents in that point span. The MLB All-Star Sport was cancelled in February, per the Chicago Tribune, and there was some discuss even cancelling the World Collection that 12 months if the journey restrictions have been nonetheless in place in October — however that they had been lifted by then, so the Cubs and Tigers did play that 12 months’s WS, although with an uncommon journey sample: The primary three video games have been performed in Detroit, with the final 4 at Wrigley Subject.
Thus, this signal was probably made in anticipation of an evening recreation at Wrigley Subject that was in the end cancelled, however not a Cubs recreation. I’ll proceed to search for additional definitive proof, and submit an replace if I discover something.
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