Actually, this is not an Opening Day picture. It was taken June 13, 1948. But it won the Pulitzer Prize and remains one of the best known images of perhaps the greatest baseball player who ever lived.
The occasion was a Yankee Stadium farewell to an obviously ailing Babe Ruth. Thirteen years retired, his 714 homers, seven pennants and four World Series titles ancient history, the Sultan of Swat leaned on fire-baller Bob Feller’s bat for support. His shoulders slumped. His jersey billowed. His No. 3, to be retired that day, stood out beneath overcast skies.
Nat Fein of the New York Herald Tribune shot the photograph. In The Pulitzer Prize Photographs: Capture the Moment, edited by Cyma Rubin and Eric Newton, Fein talked a little bit about it.
With other photographers he observed the withered Ruth in the dugout. “He looked tired, very tired,” Fein said. “The power that had been his in his youth and manhood was slowly ebbing away.”
When Ruth walked out on the field, he received a standing ovation. Fein took several pictures, then walked around behind him. “I saw Ruth standing there with his uniform, No. 3 . . . and knew that was the shot. It was a dull day, and most photographers were using flash bulbs, but I slowed the shutter and took the picture without a flash.”
Across from Ruth, in front of the ballplayers standing along the first-base line, a few other photographers kneeled. The one on the left was Ralph Morse, shooting for Life magazine. You can see some of his color photos here.
Because the Herald Tribune had assigned another photographer to shoot the game, Fein took the subway back to the office and developed his film. He laid the photos on the desk of Richard Crandell, the photo editor, who immediately chose the one taken from behind Ruth. “The sports editor liked it immediately, and he planted it on the sports page,” Fein later told the Bergen Record. "By the time the paper hit the streets, it was on the front page.”
Ruth died of throat cancer two months after the photo was taken. Fein died in 2000.