Thursday, July 14, 2022

Vintage backgrounds: Al Lang Field and the St. Petersburg Hilton

The location in Carlton Fisk's 1975 Topps card seems to have been somewhat a mystery. On the 1975 Topps blog, for example, neither Night Owl nor any of his commenters could identify the mystery building behind Fisk, which didn't match up to anything near the Red Sox Winter Haven training site.

I realized, however, that I had seen that building on another card. Sure enough, it's visible on Don Durham's 1973 card. I believe the Fisk card, like the Durham card, was photographed at the Cardinals' training site at Al Lang Field, with a 15-story Hilton hotel just beyond the left field fence. Now why was Fisk at the Cardinals' site in his home Red Sox jersey? We will probably never know.


 

3 comments:

  1. Holy cow. You have quite the memory to be able to put those two cards and their backgrounds together. Good job!

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  2. You're solving all kinds of mysteries!

    ReplyDelete