The Three Umpires
Norman Rockwell, 1949
This image comes from the April 1949 cover of The Saturday Evening Post. Rockwell captured the bottom of the sixth inning in a game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Pittsburgh Pirates. While there is still dispute about the happenings in this image, the gleeful look on the Brooklyn manager’s face (seen behind the umpires) indicates that the rain is stopping, the game will continue and the Dodgers will get the chance to score against the Pirates.
Sometimes looking at art is like being a detective. At first glance this is a simple image of three umpires trying to decide whether to call a game due to rain. But the longer you look at this image, the more information you can gather. The uniforms help identify the teams. The scoreboard in the back is the real gem in this mystery. That is where the team names are listed, the innings can be identified, and the score can be seen. Can you figure out the score of at this point in the game?
This image comes from the April 1949 cover of The Saturday Evening Post. Rockwell captured the bottom of the sixth inning in a game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Pittsburgh Pirates. While there is still dispute about the happenings in this image, the gleeful look on the Brooklyn manager’s face (seen behind the umpires) indicates that the rain is stopping, the game will continue and the Dodgers will get the chance to score against the Pirates.
Sometimes looking at art is like being a detective. At first glance this is a simple image of three umpires trying to decide whether to call a game due to rain. But the longer you look at this image, the more information you can gather. The uniforms help identify the teams. The scoreboard in the back is the real gem in this mystery. That is where the team names are listed, the innings can be identified, and the score can be seen. Can you figure out the score of at this point in the game?
