This is a real good photo of the iconic Wrigley Field scoreboard in its early years.
That scoreboard was completed in late 1937 and, as we learned in this 2020 sleuthing article, the clock on top was added
sometime in mid-1941.
So that’s the time frame we’re looking at.
The scoreboard matchups are as follows.
NL side:
PITTSBURGH/CUBS, BOSTON/BROOKLYN, NEW YORK/PHILADELPHIA, CINCINNATI/ST. LOUIS
AL side:
SOX/CLEVELAND, ST. LOUIS/DETROIT, PHILADELPHIA/NEW YORK, WASHINGTON/BOSTON
The Chinese elms that once stood on the sides of the center field bleachers have no leaves — that’s one of the reasons they were removed, they simply didn’t grow well there. But the tree visible on the street on Waveland does have full leaf, and the fans don’t look like they are wearing coats. So this photo has to date from sometime around mid-May through the end of the baseball season. It’s also likely a large crowd, as the bleachers appear full.
Then it’s simply a matter of looking at all the matchups.
Here’s where we run into a bit of trouble. Since there were only eight teams in each league back then, frequently team matchups got repeated. Thus there were several occasions in this time frame when the Cubs played the Pirates at Wrigley and the other matchups matched what we see here.
There is, however, only one game that this could be, and for this, I have Mike Bojanowski to thank. I sent him the photo and he put some filters on it to suss out the umpire numbers (as listed on the scorecard). They are 6 (plate), 5 (first base) and 7 (third base). At the time, as you likely know, three umpires was the standard for most games, with four only occasionally used. Four umpires didn’t become the standard for all games until the 1950s.
Anyway, the one game that matches this was played Sunday, May 28, 1939. Attendance that day was 26,511. The bleachers being full as shown pretty much matches that. The Cubs won the game 6-2, with Dizzy Dean (!) throwing a complete game. The Cubs never really contended that year, finishing fourth at 84-70, 13 games behind the pennant-winning Reds.
There are a couple of other notable things about this photo. You’ll note that there’s nothing on the board except the umpire numbers — no starting pitchers, no scores at all. This was apparently common practice in those days in the time before games started. In 1939 Sunday games at Wrigley Field began at 3 p.m. I don’t have specific evidence of this, but it seems likely that scoreboard workers didn’t go up into the board back then until shortly before game time, leading to this blank board until then.
There’s one other notable thing in this photo that tells us the year. That’s the car on Waveland at the bottom:
1939 is the only year that plate matches, based on this Illinois license plate history page.
