Mickey Mantle & Joe Dimaggio - A Moment For The Ages

each picture to me is very special the slides on this carousel have been put away for decades and i had frankly forgotten how many pictures i took on mickey mantle day when his number was retired and there's mickey in the golf cart and how many pictures i took on the first day that he returned to the stadium in uniform as a retired yankee mickey and joe in the dugout when i look at the slides now on the screen i can play back the day and i can begin to feel the feelings and the emotions which i experienced when i was on the field this is one of my favorite pictures of all time this picture represents two of the four yankee icons of all time and it makes it a very profound picture i'm not sure to this day and i don't think there's anybody alive who could tell us whether they were scheduled to be standing side by side but the fact that they were is what makes the picture unique it's not that i took it anybody could have been stranded in center field it's the fact that mickey was standing next to his predecessor in center field and this is the same bag that i've carried my equipment in for 45 years it's a wonderful camera and it still works like a charm and this is the camera and this is the actual gun handle that i shot the picture of mickey mantle and joe dimaggio with these are the good old days i was on the field as were many journalists in 1969 when mickey mantle returned to yankee stadium for his first return to the stadium as a retired player in pinstripes i still had a press pass from the newspaper where i was a commercial journalist in oswego new york and i had also worked for my college paper as editor and as managing editor and all the old-timers typically stand between first base and third base for the playing of the national anthem well i was out on the center field side of second base when the public address announcer bob shepard and he asked for all the media to leave the field and i had my camera with me and i didn't hear the announcement well what was i going to do when the national anthem started to play i was the only journalist on the field i wasn't going to scurry across the infield in front of 70 000 people so i just crouched down and i started shooting pictures it happened so fast i made the decision to take pictures not to stand up and face the flag the angle was low mickey and joe never looked down at me they never took their eyes off the flag which is very telling and very important photographers are sometimes lucky i attribute my my ability to take this picture not to my technical skill but to my good fortune i was there i was in a spot and i just knew what to do with that moment when i look at these faces i also see great patriotic pride remember they're looking at the flag this is the national anthem this is a very somber moment and these two men at that time in baseball which was still a game had great respect for the flag and for their country and you can see it on their faces so as a photographer that's what i see i see humility i see greatness i see celebrity i also see patriotic pride so it's a moment for the ages and i can still feel the moment

Channel: Jaybird Media Group

Views: 27,565

Keywords: Top Phoenix Video Production, baseball, Sports, Yankees, Award-winning Videographer

Id: 5G_FeONCAZ0

Length: 3min 29sec (209 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 09 2022