{"id":51555,"date":"2013-05-01T12:30:13","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T16:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=51555"},"modified":"2013-05-01T16:34:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-01T20:34:00","slug":"bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/","title":{"rendered":"How William Eggleston Would Photograph a Baseball Game"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"IMG_5084\"<\/a>

Photo: Leah Sobsey\/leahsobsey.com<\/small><\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

I am at war with the obvious. \u2014William Eggleston<\/i><\/p>\n

Not long ago, I wrote about the formal and spiritual affinities between baseball and the genre of music called power pop. Both observe an \u201cunwavering, repetitive adherence to form\u201d while pushing hard against strict, self-imposed formal limits, thus \u201cmak[ing] music out of a very precise, narrow, angular geometry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, on April 8, the day before the Durham Bulls\u2019 inaugural home game of the season, Bull City Summer\u2019s first guest photographer, Alec Soth, gave a talk at the North Carolina Museum of Art, where his show \u201cWanderlust<\/a>\u201d is currently on view. He began by showing a slide, not of his own work, but of Flowers for Lucia<\/i> by the photographer William Eggleston. Eggleston \u201changs over me,\u201d Soth confessed, before showing a picture he made of Eggleston himself.<\/p>\n

These disparate elements\u2014power pop and Eggleston\u2014came together for me just a few hours after Soth\u2019s talk, when the documentary film, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me<\/i><\/a>, about the seminal power-pop band, closed Durham\u2019s annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. (Eggleston appears in the documentary, so ravaged and slurred by years of hard living that the filmmakers resort to subtitling their interview with him in order to make him intelligible.) To make a nakedly baseball-centric comparison, you could say that Big Star was a can\u2019t-miss major-league prospect that somehow missed: led by the late Alex Chilton, the band should have found international fame but barely got out of Memphis, the Triple-A city it called home. Big Star was finished after two albums\u2014both neglected on release, both now considered masterpieces. (The laggard, final Big Star Third<\/i> is essentially a Chilton solo recording.)<\/p>\n

\"Big<\/a><\/p>\n

The cover of Big Star\u2019s second album, Radio City<\/i>, reproduces a famous photograph<\/a> by Eggleston: Greenwood, Mississippi, 1973<\/i>, better known as \u201cThe Red Ceiling.\u201d Around the time he made the picture, Eggleston discovered dye-transfer printing, which he adopted from the domain of commercial photography. \u201c\u2018The Red Ceiling\u2019 is so powerful that, in fact, I\u2019ve never seen it reproduced on the page to my satisfaction. When you look at a dye-transfer print it\u2019s like it\u2019s red blood that is wet on the wall. It shocks you every time,\u201d Eggleston has observed. <\/i>And elsewhere: \u201cThe color saturation and the quality of the ink was overwhelming \u2026 By the time you get into all those dyes, it doesn\u2019t look at all like the scene.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baseball is mostly sheer space, sheer time\u2014a tense, dense green stillness between pitches. The players stand like notes waiting to be played. At Durham Bulls Athletic Park, there is still more color saturation: the \u201cBlue Monster\u201d (an homage to Fenway Park\u2019s famous Green Monster), which rises thirty feet and stretches two hundred feet across left field. Last week, when the Norfolk Tides came to town, their highlighter-orange uniforms created still more vivid color contrast.<\/p>\n

The palette usually imposed on baseball art\u2014grainy, faded earth tones or just black and white\u2014is Ken Burns kitsch. Ballgames are actually very bright, whether on a truant\u2019s Wednesday afternoon or under a night game\u2019s floodlights, and fixed, full color is a matter of doctrinaire pride here. We had a long, cold, sunless winter in Durham, and some of the grass at the well-kept ballpark stayed dun into April. So the Bulls\u2019 groundskeeper ingeniously spray-painted patches of it green: a dye-transfer field. It shocks you every time.<\/i> It doesn\u2019t look at all like the scene.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: Leah Sobsey\/leahsobsey.com<\/small><\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

* \u00a0* \u00a0*<\/p>\n

Eggleston grew up in Mississippi, but his home has long been Memphis. He was a Chilton family friend, using a studio behind their house, and he took some promotional pictures of Big Star. (A musician as well, he can be heard playing the piano on Chilton\u2019s cover of \u201cNature Boy\u201d<\/a> on Third<\/i>.) Eggleston was born ten years before Chilton, but Chilton erased the gap by finding early fame at age sixteen, when he sang \u201cThe Letter\u201d for the Box Tops<\/a>. The two Memphisians are said to have been somewhat competitive with one another\u2014and they do share certain sensibilities: a lyricism leavened by an attraction to the mundane; an offhandedness that almost accidentally uncovers complexities; omnivorous, unpredictable aesthetics. Both are hugely influential but impossible to mimic. If you listen closely to those first two Big Star albums, you hear the same supersaturation and heightened sound definition (like the famous \u201cbite\u201d on Big Star\u2019s guitars) the eye detects in Eggleston\u2019s dye-transfer photos. \u201cThe sheer management of tremendous energy in the high end,\u201d as recently deceased power-pop genius (and Big Star devotee) Scott Miller<\/a> put it, owes much to Big Star\u2019s engineer, John Fry. Fry pushed Ardent Studio\u2019s recording equipment almost to the point of overheating in order to capture the band\u2019s dynamics\u2014the aural equivalent of dye-transfer printing, the sound as rich and alive as blood.<\/p>\n

Likewise the crack of the bat as it hits the ear: how everything comes instantly, fully, deeply alive\u2014\u201cfaster than I can see,\u201d as Chilton sings on \u201cDaisy Glaze\u201d\u2014how it shocks you every time. It makes sense, geometrically. A baseball field, unlike other sports playing areas, is a cone, not a rectangle: a sonic shape, with all the energy forced into and out of the vertex. (Eggleston once complained that \u201cmore people than I can imagine \u2026 can go no further than appreciating a picture that is a rectangle with an object in the middle of it.\u201d) The center of the baseball cone\u2014the outfield grass somewhere beyond second base\u2014is usually empty, just as most of \u201cThe Red Ceiling\u201d is nothing but empty red, and as so much of the tension in Big Star\u2019s songs comes from how much uncluttered space<\/i> there is: notes waiting to be played.<\/p>\n

* \u00a0* \u00a0*<\/p>\n

\"William<\/a>

William Eggleston. Photo: \u00a9 Dave Anderson\/dbanderson.com<\/small><\/a><\/p><\/div><\/center><\/p>\n

I work very quickly. I only ever take one picture of one thing. Literally. Never two. So then that picture is taken and then the next one is waiting somewhere else\u2026 I don’t really worry if it works out or not. I figure it’s not worth worrying about. There’s always another picture. \u2014William Eggleston<\/i><\/p>\n

The other night, Bulls reliever Steve Geltz came into a tie game in the seventh inning. Geltz is short, doesn\u2019t throw hard, and has no especially tricky secondary pitches, yet he strikes out tons of batters\u2014his career rate is higher than any major leaguer\u2019s over the past quarter century. He struck out two batters in the seventh inning, but in the eighth he gave up a go-ahead home run to Toledo\u2019s very young, gifted slugger Nick Castellanos, one of baseball\u2019s top prospects.<\/p>\n

Geltz is a friendly, slightly stocky, what-me-worry guy from a tiny town near Buffalo, which only adds to the savant quality of his pitching. After games he\u2019s usually at his locker, sipping beer and mouthing along to the profane raps blaring in the clubhouse (he\u2019s the only white player who seems to recognize them). Still, you\u2019d have expected a downbeat Geltz after that game. He\u2019s prone to giving up home runs and had just damaged his bid for a big-league promotion by allowing another one to Castellanos\u2014whom he\u2019d never heard of, it turned out. I asked him if he was disappointed. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to have a short memory in this game,\u201d he said, head bopping to the beat. \u201cMove on to the next pitch.\u201d Sure enough, Geltz struck out the next two batters after Castellanos, and the Bulls tied the game in the bottom of the ninth and won it in the eleventh.<\/p>\n

Afterward, I couldn\u2019t help thinking of Eggleston\u2019s one-shot-from-the-hip style and of Chilton\u2019s refusal to play Big Star songs live for years after he disbanded the group, both akin to the athlete\u2019s short memory, with virtually no sentimental regard for the past. Hundreds of pitches are thrown in every game, and each one requires the sheer management of tremendous energy: the ability to gather, wind up, and fire a baseball ninety miles an hour into a little box more than sixty feet away. In the moment, you can consider nothing that came before, and nothing that will come after. It shocks you every time.<\/p>\n

Adam Sobsey has been covering the Durham Bulls since 2009. He is a columnist for Baseball Prospectus<\/a> and a contributor to its recently published guide, <\/em>Baseball Prospectus 2013. Follow him on Twitter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more about the Bull City Summer project here<\/a>, and see the <\/em>Paris Review series here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am at war with the obvious. \u2014William Eggleston Not long ago, I wrote about the formal and spiritual affinities between baseball and the genre of music called power pop. Both observe an \u201cunwavering, repetitive adherence to form\u201d while pushing hard against strict, self-imposed formal limits, thus \u201cmak[ing] music out of a very precise, narrow, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":514,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10788],"tags":[10760,10762,10764,375,10761,10648,10763,10765,100,1333],"class_list":["post-51555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bullcitysummer","tag-alec-soth","tag-alex-chilton","tag-ardent-studio","tag-baseball","tag-big-star","tag-durham-bulls","tag-john-fry","tag-nick-castellanos","tag-photography","tag-william-eggleston"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow William Eggleston Would Photograph a Baseball Game by Adam Sobsey<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"May 1, 2013 \u2013 I am at war with the obvious. \u2014William Eggleston Not long ago, I wrote about the formal and spiritual affinities between baseball and the genre of music\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How William Eggleston Would Photograph a Baseball Game by Adam Sobsey\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"May 1, 2013 \u2013 I am at war with the obvious. \u2014William Eggleston Not long ago, I wrote about the formal and spiritual affinities between baseball and the genre of music\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-05-01T16:30:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-05-01T20:34:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IMG_5084.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"700\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"467\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Adam Sobsey\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Adam Sobsey\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Adam Sobsey\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/797264e97a4fa387fdf1dd8894fd5886\"},\"headline\":\"How William Eggleston Would Photograph a Baseball Game\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-05-01T16:30:13+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-05-01T20:34:00+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/\"},\"wordCount\":1463,\"commentCount\":5,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IMG_5084.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Alec Soth\",\"Alex Chilton\",\"Ardent Studio\",\"baseball\",\"Big Star\",\"Durham Bulls\",\"John Fry\",\"Nick Castellanos\",\"photography\",\"William Eggleston\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Bull City Summer\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/\",\"name\":\"How William Eggleston Would Photograph a Baseball Game by Adam Sobsey\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IMG_5084.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-05-01T16:30:13+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-05-01T20:34:00+00:00\",\"description\":\"May 1, 2013 \u2013 I am at war with the obvious. \u2014William Eggleston Not long ago, I wrote about the formal and spiritual affinities between baseball and the genre of music\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IMG_5084.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IMG_5084.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"How William Eggleston Would Photograph a Baseball Game\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/797264e97a4fa387fdf1dd8894fd5886\",\"name\":\"Adam Sobsey\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/be1b377c5813b25c8b00601de8e6fdb23446c940d2e5fb9e22fc1da4ea11fa2f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/be1b377c5813b25c8b00601de8e6fdb23446c940d2e5fb9e22fc1da4ea11fa2f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Adam Sobsey\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/asobsey\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How William Eggleston Would Photograph a Baseball Game by Adam Sobsey","description":"May 1, 2013 \u2013 I am at war with the obvious. \u2014William Eggleston Not long ago, I wrote about the formal and spiritual affinities between baseball and the genre of music","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"How William Eggleston Would Photograph a Baseball Game by Adam Sobsey","og_description":"May 1, 2013 \u2013 I am at war with the obvious. \u2014William Eggleston Not long ago, I wrote about the formal and spiritual affinities between baseball and the genre of music","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2013-05-01T16:30:13+00:00","article_modified_time":"2013-05-01T20:34:00+00:00","og_image":[{"width":700,"height":467,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IMG_5084.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Adam Sobsey","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Adam Sobsey","Est. reading time":"7 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/"},"author":{"name":"Adam Sobsey","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/797264e97a4fa387fdf1dd8894fd5886"},"headline":"How William Eggleston Would Photograph a Baseball Game","datePublished":"2013-05-01T16:30:13+00:00","dateModified":"2013-05-01T20:34:00+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/"},"wordCount":1463,"commentCount":5,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IMG_5084.jpg","keywords":["Alec Soth","Alex Chilton","Ardent Studio","baseball","Big Star","Durham Bulls","John Fry","Nick Castellanos","photography","William Eggleston"],"articleSection":["Bull City Summer"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/","name":"How William Eggleston Would Photograph a Baseball Game by Adam Sobsey","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IMG_5084.jpg","datePublished":"2013-05-01T16:30:13+00:00","dateModified":"2013-05-01T20:34:00+00:00","description":"May 1, 2013 \u2013 I am at war with the obvious. \u2014William Eggleston Not long ago, I wrote about the formal and spiritual affinities between baseball and the genre of music","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IMG_5084.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IMG_5084.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/01\/bull-city-summer-how-william-eggleston-would-photograph-a-baseball-game\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"How William Eggleston Would Photograph a Baseball Game"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/797264e97a4fa387fdf1dd8894fd5886","name":"Adam Sobsey","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/be1b377c5813b25c8b00601de8e6fdb23446c940d2e5fb9e22fc1da4ea11fa2f?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/be1b377c5813b25c8b00601de8e6fdb23446c940d2e5fb9e22fc1da4ea11fa2f?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Adam Sobsey"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/asobsey\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/514"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51555"}],"version-history":[{"count":39,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51615,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51555\/revisions\/51615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}