The Laredo Times · Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · 1935

Fans Settle Burning Question

July 1935, Shibe Park. "When Old Sol's rays became too uncomfortable for the balcony bugs at Shibe Park, Philadelphia, they decided to discard their shirts, roll up their trouser legs, and get a sun tan while watching the game." The headline calls it settling a burning question. The photo shows the ayes have it.

The headline puns and the photograph delivers: a railing full of Athletics fans, caps still on, shirts decidedly off, draped over the Shibe Park balcony like laundry with opinions about the infield.

The caption does the rest: “When Old Sol’s rays became too uncomfortable for the balcony bugs at Shibe Park, Philadelphia, they decided to discard their shirts, roll up their trouser legs, and get a sun tan while watching the game. Here are a few of the Athletics’ fans displaying their manly forms for the sun to work on.”

Save a moment for “balcony bugs.” Before fans were fans they were bugs and cranks, and in 1935 the old word was still limber enough to sort spectators by seating section. These particular bugs colonized the cheap upper reaches of Shibe Park, which is exactly where this site’s sympathies live.

The photo carries a wire service stamp, and that is how a row of Philadelphia sunbathers came to grace page seven of the Laredo Times in Texas, eighteen hundred miles from the ballpark. A paper in Laredo in July did not need to import stories about heat. It ran this one anyway, presumably on the principle that the burning question and its answer are universal.