“Baseball been berry, berry good to me!”… Chico Esquela, fictional baseball character/legend, circa 1979.
I, like Chico, feel the same way when it comes to baseball, and late last year I was fortunate to be able to give back to the game that I love, donating over 6500 of my original baseball color slides, prints and negatives, spanning three decades, to the Baseball Hall of Fame Library and Museum. This past month, the Baseball Hall of Fame honored my donation with a wonderfully written story in their Memories and Dreams publication, distributed to members of the Hall of Fame. The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, with permission, agreed to allow me to share this article with my many friends and followers online who may not have had a chance to enjoy a copy of the print version.
My thanks go out to Jeff Idelson, President of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum for his graciousness in accepting my donation, and for his unwavering passion and love of the game of baseball, to Jenny Ambrose, Assistant Photo Archivist at the Hall of Fame, for writting such a humbling piece and for her wonderful attention to detail while cataloging my donation, and to everyone else at the Hall for allowing me to place my legacy of baseball photography within The Hall, to be enjoyed by baseball fans now and forever.
Thank you, baseball… You truly have been very, very good to me!
A gallery of my work created by the Baseball Hall of Fame featuring images included in my donation can be found at http://baseballhall.org/vesely
