#Shortstops: Don Wingfield’s Photography

The Don Wingfield Photographic Materials collection at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum has more than 4,100 film negatives highlighting roughly two decades of baseball history between 1950 and 1970. Wingfield was a prominent freelance photographer in the Washington, D.C. area working for the Sporting News, Topps Trading Cards and different teams including the Washington Senators.

Some highlights from the first section of the collection include four Hall of Famers and legendary country singer Gene Autry. Wingfield was a 'photographer for hire' for large events including everything from the All-Star Games and World Series to smaller events like baseball comedian Nick Altrock’s birthday with the Senators. Of the three photos taken of Hank Aaron in that section, the most notable is at the 1960 All-Star Game with Harvey Kuenn.

Many of the film negatives in the collection, including Hall of Famers Luis Aparicio and Richie Ashburn, have the player posed in a kneeling or batting position for baseball cards or newspaper articles. Walter Alston, legendary manager for more than 20 years, is also captured four times in both Brooklyn and Los Angeles uniforms.

Autry, best known for his song Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and other Christmas classics, was the owner of the California Angels from 1961 until his retirement in 1997. Three photos of Gene Autry in this collection are of him attending a baseball game.

And there are many more gems in this collection yet to be examined.

Wingfield was born in 1915 in Richmond, Va., and died from lung cancer on March 12, 1997, in Alexandria, Va. Little is known of his life until his military career in the 1940s. He settled in the suburbs of Alexandria and primarily worked in the Washington, D.C. area, explaining why there is a larger concentration of Senators, Phillies, Orioles and New York players as the focus of his photographs. Wingfield was witness to the D-Day Operation in Normandy June 1944 and the Japanese surrender in September 1945 aboard the USS Missouri. In the following year, he was transferred to the Army and took photos for the Department of Defense. The National Archives catalog has more than 90 entries of Wingfield's work.

Wingfield retired as a Master Sergeant from military service in 1961.

During his military service, he married his wife, Ruth Shepard, and started his baseball photography career as early as 1953. So far, much of the collection focuses on the late 1950s and the early 1960s. Don worked both as a photographer and writer for the Sporting News, one of the most renowned baseball news magazines of the 20th century, between 1957 and 1959.

In the Sept. 30, 1957, issue of the Sporting News, an article about "10-Year veteran" Richie Ashburn discusses a slight decline in his athleticism. The article continues with a Triple-A player named Don Landrum who was poised to take Ashburn's center field position in the upcoming season. Ashburn, however, held onto his job.

Wingfield was also placed on assignments less focused on the actual game and more on specific individuals. A full page of photographs displays the Baltimore Orioles' new general manager and future Hall of Famer Lee MacPhail doing a Q&A in 1957. The questions were asked by Jesse A. Linthicum, the sports editor for the Baltimore Sun and a correspondent of the Sporting News.

Another set of photographs in a Sept. 1958 issue show President Dwight Eisenhower answering questions from the press in person and on the phone about Calvin Griffith’s proposal to move the Senators to Minnesota.

"If the Nationals... would have a club that had a fighting chance, on the average, of getting into the first division, I, for one, would be down at a good number of their evening games to see them, and I would be one of their customers," President Eisenhower told reporters. "...if we could only have that, I am practically certain this city would demand that they stay here, and I think they should. But I think they should have a little bit better ball club."

The 1950s, with the advent of more mainstream television broadcasting, marked a division between the sport and business sides of the game. Combined with the sports antitrust hearings in Washington, D.C. in 1951 and 1957, these issues started to create some anxieties about the future of baseball. Closely related to the 1958 article, Wingfield authored a story during the 1959 offseason about the Washington Senators selling their minor league stadiums to create 'working agreements' with host cities. Washington would keep ownership of the players, which included future Hall of Famers Harmon Killebrew and Jim Kaat, and blamed low attendance and high maintenance bills for the decision. The photographs and article unveiled the organization’s gradual shift to leave Washington for Minnesota in 1961.

Unfortunately, little information is found on Wingfield until 1996 when a book about photographer representation at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was presented during the eighth annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture. The book, which advocated the creation of a Hall of Fame award for baseball photographers, mentioned 'Don Wingfield of Alexandria, VA'. It claims that Wingfield had been suggesting to the Museum over the years that there should be a place for the people behind the camera since the Museum uses photography in its exhibits.

From the Department of Defense to the baseball field, Don Wingfield left an indelible mark on 1950s and 1960s professional baseball photography. His work lives on through the collection at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Jacob Maloney was an Archives and Library intern at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum