Photography 101: Understanding Depth of Field and How to Control It

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One of the first things many photographers notice when they begin looking more carefully at photographs is that sharpness does not always extend evenly throughout an image.

Sometimes a person is perfectly sharp while the trees, buildings, or lights behind them seem to melt into a soft background. In another photograph, everything from the rocks in the foreground to mountains far in the distance may appear detailed and clear.

Both photographs can be correctly focused.

The difference is something called depth of field.

The phrase may sound technical when you first encounter it, but the idea behind it is actually fairly simple. Depth of field describes how much of the scene appears acceptably sharp in front of and behind the exact point where your camera is focused.

Learning to control depth of field gives you another way to guide the viewer through your photograph. Instead of simply deciding what to focus on, you begin deciding how much of the scene you want the viewer to notice clearly.

That makes depth of field both a technical tool and a creative one.

What Is Depth of Field?

Imagine that you are photographing someone standing outdoors several feet in front of a row of trees.

You focus carefully on the person's eyes.

If the person is sharp while the trees behind them become soft and blurry, you are seeing a shallow depth of field.

If the person is sharp and the trees behind them are also fairly clear, you are seeing a deeper depth of field.

A simple way to think about it is to imagine a zone of sharpness extending in front of and behind the place where you focused. Sometimes that zone is narrow. Sometimes it stretches much farther through the scene.

There is one important detail here. Only one exact distance is actually the camera's true plane of focus. Objects in front of and behind that point gradually become less sharp. Depth of field describes the range that still looks sharp enough to us when we view the photograph.

There is not an invisible line where the image suddenly changes from perfectly sharp to completely blurry. The transition happens gradually.

Fortunately, you do not need to calculate any of that mathematically to begin using depth of field effectively.

You mostly need to understand what makes that zone larger or smaller.

Shallow Depth of Field

A shallow depth of field means that only a relatively small portion of the image appears sharp.

Portrait photography is probably the most familiar example.

A photographer may focus on a person's eyes and use settings that allow the face to remain crisp while the background becomes soft and unobtrusive. The background is still there, but it no longer competes strongly with the subject.

This can help direct the viewer's attention exactly where the photographer wants it to go.

The same technique works with many other subjects. You might use shallow depth of field when photographing a flower, a pet, wildlife, food, a small object, or an architectural detail.

It can also be useful when the background is distracting.

Suppose you are photographing someone in a park, but there happens to be a fence, sign, parked car, or cluster of people behind them. If you can soften those background elements, they may become far less noticeable.

A shallow depth of field does not remove the background. It simply gives the background a quieter role.

Deep Depth of Field

A deep depth of field means that a larger portion of the scene appears sharp.

Landscape photography is one of the most common examples.

Imagine standing beside a lake with flowers in the foreground, trees farther away, and mountains rising in the distance. Instead of isolating one flower and allowing everything else to blur, you may want the viewer to appreciate the entire scene.

In that case, a deeper depth of field is usually more useful.

Travel photography, architecture, cityscapes, interior photography, and some group photographs can also benefit from having more of the scene appear sharp.

Neither shallow nor deep depth of field is automatically better.

They simply create different visual experiences.

Image created by AI

The same portrait can feel very different depending on aperture. At f/2.8, the background becomes soft and unobtrusive. At f/11, more of the surrounding environment remains visible and recognizable.

Aperture Is the Main Control

For most beginning photographers, the easiest way to start controlling depth of field is through the camera's aperture.

Inside your lens is an opening that controls how much light passes through the lens and reaches the camera sensor.

The size of that opening is described using numbers such as:

f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, and f/11.

This is where photography vocabulary becomes slightly backward at first.

A small f-number means a larger lens opening.

A large f-number means a smaller lens opening.

So f/2.8 is a wider opening than f/11.

That feels upside down until you have used the settings often enough for them to become familiar.

For depth of field, there is an easier relationship to remember.

A lower f-number generally produces a shallower depth of field.

A higher f-number generally produces a deeper depth of field.

If you want to photograph a person and soften the background, you might try f/2.8 or f/4 if your lens allows it.

If you want much more of a landscape to appear sharp, you might begin experimenting around f/8 or f/11.

These are not rules carved into stone. They are starting points.

The aperture you choose will depend on your lens, available light, distance from your subject, focal length, and what you want the finished photograph to look like.

Controlling Depth of Field on
a Nikon Camera

On many Nikon cameras, one of the easiest ways to experiment with depth of field is to use Aperture Priority mode, which is usually marked with the letter A.

In this mode, you choose the aperture and the camera automatically selects an appropriate shutter speed to produce the exposure.

That makes Aperture Priority especially useful when you are learning.

You can concentrate on changing the f-number and watching what happens to the background without having to manually adjust every exposure setting.

Once the camera is set to A mode, use the appropriate command dial to change the aperture. The exact dial or control varies somewhat between Nikon models, so your camera manual is the best guide for the physical controls on your particular camera.

Try focusing on the same subject and making several photographs at different apertures.

Start with a low f-number such as f/2.8 or f/4.

Then try f/5.6.

Move to f/8.

Finish at f/11.

When you compare the photographs later on a larger screen, pay attention to the background rather than just the subject.

You should begin to see the zone of apparent sharpness expanding as the aperture becomes smaller.

Controlling Depth of Field on
a Canon Camera

Canon cameras work on the same photographic principle.

On many Canon models, Aperture Priority is labeled Av, which stands for Aperture Value.

Once you select Av mode, you choose the aperture while the camera selects the shutter speed.

If you want a softer background, try moving toward a lower f-number.

If you want more of the scene to remain sharp, move toward a higher f-number.

Again, the exact button and dial arrangement will vary depending on the Canon model you are using.

The important idea is not the location of the control.

Whether your camera says A or Av, you are telling the camera essentially the same thing:

You want control over aperture because aperture is important to the way the photograph looks.

The camera can help handle the corresponding shutter speed.

Aperture Is Not the Only Thing
That Affects Depth of Field

Aperture receives most of the attention when photographers discuss depth of field, but it is not working alone.

Your distance from the subject also makes a major difference.

Move closer to your subject and depth of field generally becomes shallower.

Move farther away and depth of field generally becomes deeper.

This is very easy to demonstrate with something as simple as a flower.

Photograph the flower from several feet away, then move much closer and focus again.

Even if you leave your aperture unchanged, you may notice that the background appears softer as you move closer.

This is one reason close-up photographs often have very shallow areas of sharpness.

Your lens and focal length also influence the appearance of depth and background separation.

Longer focal lengths are often used when photographers want strong subject isolation. Wider-angle lenses are commonly used when photographers want to show more of the surrounding environment.

The exact relationship between focal length and depth of field becomes more complicated when you start considering subject distance, camera position, and how large the subject appears in the frame.

For a beginner, the practical lesson is enough:

Aperture, your distance from the subject, and your choice of lens all work together.

image created by AI

Depth of field affects more than portraits. At f/2.8, the foreground flower stands apart from a strongly blurred background. At f/11, the garden, bench, path, lake, and distant landscape appear much more defined.

Depth of Field and Bokeh Are Not
 Exactly the Same Thing

You will often hear the word bokeh when photographers talk about shallow depth of field.

The two ideas are related, but they do not mean exactly the same thing.

Depth of field describes how much of the photograph appears acceptably sharp.

Bokeh describes the visual character or quality of the areas that are out of focus.

Those soft circles of light you sometimes see behind a portrait are part of the bokeh.

Different lenses can render those out-of-focus areas differently.

For Photography 101, the easiest thing to remember is that a shallow depth of field can help create a blurred background, while bokeh describes what that blur actually looks like.

Remember That Aperture
Also Changes Exposure

There is another reason aperture matters.

Changing the aperture changes how much light enters the camera.

A wide aperture such as f/2.8 allows more light through the lens.

A smaller aperture such as f/11 allows less light through.

If you are using Aperture Priority mode, the camera will usually respond by changing the shutter speed.

For example, if you move from f/4 to f/11, the camera may need to use a slower shutter speed because less light is passing through the lens.

That can become important if you are holding the camera by hand or photographing something that moves.

A shutter speed that becomes too slow may introduce camera shake or motion blur.

You may need to increase ISO, stabilize the camera, use a tripod, or choose a somewhat wider aperture.

This is one of the reasons photography settings are so interconnected.

Aperture affects depth of field, but it also affects exposure.

Shutter speed affects exposure, but it also affects motion.

ISO affects exposure, but increasing it can influence image quality.

Photography becomes easier when you stop thinking of those settings as isolated controls and begin seeing how they work together.

Why Not Just Use f/22
for Everything?

Once someone learns that higher f-numbers create greater depth of field, a natural question follows.

If f/11 gives me more sharpness through the scene, why not simply use f/22 whenever I want everything sharp?

Because photography always seems to hide another wrinkle behind the next curtain.

Very small apertures can introduce an optical effect called diffraction.

Diffraction can reduce fine detail and overall image sharpness, even though the photograph technically has greater depth of field.

That is one reason landscape photographers do not automatically choose the smallest possible aperture.

For many situations, something around f/8 or f/11 is a useful place to begin experimenting.

The best aperture depends on the scene, lens, camera, and how much depth of field you actually need.

A Simple Practice Exercise

You can learn more about depth of field in fifteen minutes of practice than you can by memorizing a page of technical definitions.

Find something around your home or outside that has visible background detail behind it.

A coffee mug on a table works.

A flower works.

A person standing several feet in front of trees works even better.

Put a Nikon camera in A mode or a Canon camera in Av mode.

Focus on the same point for every photograph.

Take your first photograph using the lowest f-number your lens allows.

Then take additional photographs at f/4, f/5.6, f/8, and f/11, if those apertures are available.

Try not to change your position or composition between photographs.

Afterward, view the images on a larger screen.

Look carefully at what happens behind the subject.

You will probably find that depth of field makes much more sense once you can see the differences side by side.

Depth of Field Is Ultimately
a Creative Decision

The goal of photography is not to make every part of every photograph perfectly sharp.

Sometimes you want the viewer to see everything.

Sometimes you want the viewer to see one thing.

A sweeping landscape may invite the eye to wander from the foreground all the way toward the horizon.

A portrait may become much stronger when the background fades quietly away and leaves only the person's expression demanding attention.

A flower may stand out beautifully when everything behind it becomes a wash of color.

Depth of field helps you make those decisions intentionally.

As you become more comfortable changing aperture, moving closer or farther from your subject, and experimenting with different lenses, depth of field begins to feel less like a camera setting and more like part of your visual language.

That is an important step in learning photography.

You are no longer simply asking whether the photograph is in focus.

You are deciding where you want the viewer to look and how you want the viewer to experience the scene.

And that is when one more camera setting begins turning into one more creative tool.

References

• Nikon USA — Understanding Maximum Aperture

• Canon U.S.A. — What Is Aperture in Photography?

• Canon U.S.A. — Depth of Field
  
  
• Cambridge in Colour - Understanding Depth of Field in Photography
  

Photography 101: How to Get Sharp Photos

Understanding Focus, Autofocus
Modes, and Focus Points

banner image created by AI

A high-speed pass at the Cleveland National Air Show.
Photographing fast-moving aircraft helped reinforce
why continuous autofocus is so useful when a
subject is rapidly changing position within
the frame.

Article researched and compiled
by Michael A. Buccilli

There is a particular kind of disappointment almost every photographer experiences.

You see something worth photographing. The light looks good. You raise the camera, compose the scene, press the shutter, and for a moment everything seems right.

Then you look at the photograph more closely.

It is not sharp.

Maybe the eyes are slightly soft. Maybe the camera focused on the background instead of the person standing in front of it. Maybe the bird you were photographing has plenty of detail in the branch beneath its feet but surprisingly little in its feathers.

Sometimes the entire photograph simply looks a little blurry, leaving you wondering what went wrong.

For photographers beginning to move beyond Auto Mode, this can be especially frustrating because getting the exposure right is only part of creating a successful photograph. Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO control how light reaches the image, but they do not automatically guarantee that the subject you care about will be sharp.

That brings us to another important part of learning to use a camera:

Focus.

Just as we discovered when learning camera modes, autofocus does not have to be nearly as intimidating as all those settings, focus points, boxes, buttons, and menu choices can make it appear.

The goal is not to memorize every autofocus feature your camera offers.

The goal is to understand what the camera is trying to do, decide what you want to be sharp, and give the camera enough information to help you accomplish it.

First, Is It Really a Focus Problem?

Before changing autofocus settings, it helps to understand an important distinction.

A photograph that looks blurry does not necessarily have a focusing problem.

Several things can cause an image to appear soft, but two of the most common are missed focus and motion blur.

They can look similar at first glance, but they happen for very different reasons.

Missed focus occurs when the camera focuses somewhere other than where you intended.

Perhaps you were photographing someone and the camera focused on the tree behind them. Maybe you photographed a dog and its nose is sharp while its eyes are slightly soft. The camera did focus, but it focused on the wrong place.

Motion blur is different.

Motion blur occurs when either the camera or the subject moves enough during the exposure to create visible blur.

Imagine photographing a bird perched on a branch. If the branch behind the bird is sharp but the bird is not, the camera may have focused incorrectly.

But if nothing in the photograph looks truly sharp, particularly when you were holding the camera by hand, the problem may instead be camera movement caused by a shutter speed that was too slow.

The subject itself may also have moved during the exposure.

That distinction matters because changing your autofocus mode will not fix camera shake.

Sometimes the solution is focus.

Sometimes the solution is shutter speed.

And sometimes, photography being photography, it is a little of both.

What Autofocus Is Actually Doing

Modern cameras can perform some remarkably sophisticated autofocus calculations, but the basic idea is surprisingly straightforward.

The camera is looking for an area it can identify as being in focus.

Depending on the camera, lens, autofocus mode, and settings, it may analyze contrast, distance, patterns, faces, eyes, or recognized subjects within the scene.

But there is an important lesson underneath all that technology:

Your camera does not know what matters to you.

Suppose you photograph a person standing in front of an old stone building because you care about the expression on that person's face.

The camera sees a face, but it also sees a wall, windows, stone edges, trees, shadows, and perhaps several other high-contrast objects.

Left entirely to itself, it has to make a decision.

Sometimes it makes exactly the decision you wanted.

Sometimes it becomes unusually enthusiastic about the shrubbery.

That is why learning a little about autofocus modes and focus points can give you dramatically more control without requiring you to operate every part of the camera manually.

Autofocus Modes: Is Your Subject
Still or Moving?

Although manufacturers use different names for their autofocus systems, most cameras include modes based around one simple question:

Is the subject staying relatively still, or is it moving?

Once I began thinking about autofocus in those terms, the terminology became much easier to understand.

Single Autofocus for Still Subjects

When photographing something that is not moving significantly, single autofocus is often the easiest choice.

Canon commonly calls this One-Shot AF.

Nikon and many other manufacturers commonly use AF-S, meaning Single Autofocus.

You partially press the shutter button, or use whichever focusing control you have chosen, and the camera focuses on the selected subject. Once focus is achieved, that focus distance generally remains locked while you continue holding the control.

This works beautifully for subjects such as landscapes, architecture, still-life photography, flowers, stationary objects, and portraits where the person is remaining relatively still.

Imagine photographing an old doorway while wandering through a historic European town.

The doorway is not going anywhere.

You focus carefully, compose the photograph, and make the exposure.

Single autofocus is perfectly suited to that situation.

But things become more interesting when your subject decides not to cooperate.

Wildlife, athletes, children, pets, vehicles, birds, and other moving subjects have an unfortunate habit of refusing to wait while photographers work everything out.

That is when continuous autofocus becomes important.

Continuous Autofocus for
Moving Subjects

For subjects that are moving, photographers usually switch to continuous autofocus.

Canon traditionally calls this AI Servo AF.

Nikon and many other camera systems commonly refer to it as AF-C, or Continuous Autofocus.

Instead of focusing once and remaining at that distance, the camera continues adjusting focus as the subject moves.

When I first started learning AI Servo AF on my Canon EOS Rebel T6, it took me a little while to understand what the camera was actually doing. Part of the problem was that I was overthinking it, which I have a habit of doing more often than I probably should. I was trying to make the setting more complicated than it really was. Eventually, the idea clicked: with One-Shot AF, the camera focuses and holds that focus; with AI Servo, the camera keeps adjusting focus as the subject moves. Once I stopped worrying about all the terminology and thought about it that simply, it became much easier to understand.

Imagine photographing a dog running toward you.

At the beginning of the sequence, the dog might be 40 feet away.

A moment later it is 30 feet away.

Then 20.

If the camera focused once and remained locked at the original distance, the dog would quickly move outside the area of sharp focus.

Continuous autofocus allows the camera to keep updating focus as you follow the subject.

That makes it especially useful for wildlife, birds in flight, sports, running children, pets, cars, motorcycles, boats, performers, and almost anything else moving toward, away from, or across the camera.

It also becomes extremely useful at events such as airshows, where an aircraft may cross the frame quickly and give you only seconds to track, compose, focus, and release the shutter.

A high-speed pass at the Cleveland National Air Show.

Photographing fast-moving aircraft helped reinforce

why continuous autofocus is so useful when a

subject is rapidly changing position

within the frame

Photo Copyright

Michael A. Buccilli

For anyone interested in wildlife, sports, transportation, or action photography, learning continuous autofocus becomes one of the most useful steps toward getting more consistently sharp photographs.

What About Automatic
Autofocus Selection?

Some cameras also offer an autofocus mode that attempts to determine automatically whether the subject is still or moving.

On Canon cameras, for example, you may encounter AI Focus AF.

The idea is convenient. The camera begins by treating the subject as stationary and can change its focusing behavior if it detects movement.

That can certainly be useful in situations where a subject may suddenly begin moving.

But as you gain experience, there is an advantage to making that decision yourself.

If you know you are photographing a stationary building, there is little reason for the camera to continually reconsider whether the building has suddenly decided to leave.

Likewise, if you are photographing a football player running down the field, you already know you are dealing with movement.

This is part of the larger transition we have been discussing throughout this Photography 101 series.

You are not trying to eliminate everything automatic from the camera.

You are simply learning which decisions are worth making yourself.

Understanding Focus Points

Now we come to those little boxes you see inside the viewfinder or on the camera's screen.

These are focus points, sometimes called AF points.

Focus points tell the camera where within the frame it should concentrate its focusing attention.

Depending on the camera, you may have a relatively small number of focus points or a very large array of selectable focusing areas.

More focus points can be extremely useful.

They can also create another version of the same problem we encountered earlier.

The more choices the camera has, the more opportunities it has to choose something other than what you intended.

Suppose you are photographing a deer standing among trees.

You want the deer's eye to be sharp.

But the scene also contains branches, grass, tree trunks, leaves, and perhaps patches of bright sunlight.

When the camera is allowed to choose freely among many autofocus points, it may decide that one of those surrounding objects provides a stronger focusing target.

That is where selecting your own focus point or focusing area becomes extremely useful.

Instead of essentially telling the camera:

Find something interesting.

You are telling it:

Focus here.

That small change can dramatically improve the consistency of your photographs.

Focus Can Change the Story

One of the things I began noticing while practicing with different focus points was something I had not really expected.

Changing the point of focus could slightly change the story of the photograph.

My eyes might first be drawn naturally to one part of a scene, but when I deliberately chose a different focus point, another detail could suddenly become more important.

The composition had not necessarily changed.

The scene itself had not changed.

But the emphasis had.

That helped me realize that focus is not only a technical decision.

It can also be a storytelling decision.

If one object is sharp while everything around it becomes softer, the viewer's eye will naturally move toward that sharper area.

Change what is sharp, and you can change what the photograph seems to be about.

That is a powerful creative tool.

Why a Single Focus Point
Can Be So Useful

Beginning photographers sometimes assume that using more autofocus points must always be better.

After all, more sounds better.

Photography rarely works quite that neatly.

Using a single focus point can provide tremendous precision when your subject is relatively predictable.

For a portrait, you can place the focus point over the subject's eye.

For a flower, you can decide exactly which part of the blossom receives attention.

For wildlife, you can aim toward the animal's head or eye rather than allowing the camera to choose between the animal and everything surrounding it.

For architecture, you can choose the structural element that matters most to your composition.

That does not mean single-point autofocus is always the best choice.

Trying to follow a fast-moving bird with one tiny focus point can quickly become an exercise in creative frustration.

Modern cameras offer larger focus areas, zones, subject tracking, face detection, and eye-detection systems because different situations require different tools.

But learning to use a single focus point teaches one of the most valuable habits in photography:

Decide what matters in the photograph.

The technology comes afterward.

Where Should You Focus?

There is no single focusing location that works for every type of photograph. Instead, think about the part of the scene that carries the visual importance.

For portraits, the eyes are usually the most important area. People naturally look toward the eyes when viewing another person, so a portrait generally feels more convincing when the eyes are sharp.

When working with a shallow depth of field, focusing on the eye closest to the camera is often a good approach.

Modern eye-detection autofocus systems can make this considerably easier, but the artistic principle has not changed.

The eye matters.

The same principle generally applies to wildlife and animals.

Whether you are photographing an eagle, horse, deer, dolphin, squirrel, or family pet, a sharp eye helps create a sense of connection between the subject and the viewer.

A photograph can contain beautifully detailed feathers or fur and still feel slightly wrong when the eye is noticeably soft.

Landscapes create a different challenge because photographers often want a larger portion of the scene to appear sharp.

Automatically focusing on the closest object is not always ideal, and simply focusing toward infinity is not always the best answer either.

Aperture, focal length, focusing distance, and depth of field all interact.

The important question becomes:

Which parts of this landscape need to appear sharp for the photograph to work?

For everyday photography, the same principle applies.

Look for the visual subject.

Maybe it is a face.

Maybe it is a sign hanging over an old storefront.

Maybe it is a brightly colored boat against a harbor.

Maybe it is an architectural detail catching golden evening light.

Place focus where you want the viewer's attention to go.

That is the creative decision.

Focus and Depth of Field
Work Together

One of the most important relationships in photography is the connection between focus and aperture.

Focus determines the specific distance at which the camera establishes sharpness.

Depth of field describes how much of the area in front of and behind that focusing distance appears acceptably sharp.

A wide aperture such as f/1.8 or f/2.8 can produce a shallow depth of field.

That means precise focusing becomes especially important.

Suppose you photograph a portrait using a very wide aperture and accidentally focus on the person's ear rather than their eye.

The ear might be wonderfully sharp while the eye is noticeably soft.

At a smaller aperture such as f/8, the same focusing error may be far less obvious because more of the scene falls within the depth of field.

This is one reason wide-aperture photography can look beautiful when everything comes together while also being somewhat unforgiving.

That lovely blurred background comes with a tradeoff.

Your focusing accuracy matters more.

Sometimes Blur Helps
the Photograph

Blur is not always something to eliminate.

Sometimes it becomes part of the composition.

I have noticed this often in wedding photography, even though wedding photography is not a direction I plan to pursue in my own business.

Wedding photographers will sometimes allow parts of the foreground or background to fall deliberately out of focus, creating a softer frame around the bride and groom.

That softness can add gentleness to the photograph, reduce competing distractions, and guide the viewer directly toward the couple.

In those photographs, the blur is not something that went wrong.

It is part of the visual language of the image.

Sharpness tells the viewer what deserves attention. Softness can help everything else step aside.

That idea extends far beyond weddings.

You may photograph through leaves, flowers, railings, people, or other foreground elements and allow those objects to remain soft while the subject stays sharp.

The result can create depth, atmosphere, and a stronger sense of being present within the scene.

A military aircraft passing overhead at the Cleveland

National Air Show. The soft foreground leaves create

depth while attention remains on the aircraft,
showing how blur can become part of the
composition rather than simply a flaw.

Photo Copyright

Michael A. Buccilli

This is an important distinction.

A blurry photograph and a photograph that uses blur intentionally are not the same thing.

One is usually an accident.

The other is a choice.

Common Reasons Photographs
Are Not Sharp

When a photograph disappoints you, it helps to diagnose the problem rather than immediately assuming something is wrong with the camera or lens.

The camera may simply have focused on the wrong object. Selecting your own focus point may solve that problem.

The subject may have moved. Continuous autofocus and a faster shutter speed may be needed.

The camera itself may have moved while you pressed the shutter. Increasing shutter speed, improving your handholding technique, using image stabilization when appropriate, or placing the camera on a tripod can help.

Your depth of field may have been too shallow for the subject.

You may have focused correctly and then moved slightly forward or backward before taking the photograph.

Autofocus may also struggle when the scene is extremely dark or contains very little contrast.

Photography becomes considerably less frustrating once you begin asking why an image is soft instead of simply concluding that it "came out blurry."

Every missed photograph can teach you something.

A Simple Focus Exercise

You do not need an exotic location or expensive subject to practice autofocus.

Find three ordinary objects around your home and place them at different distances from the camera. A coffee mug, book, and small plant will work perfectly.

Choose a relatively wide aperture if your lens allows it.

Select a single focus point.

Without changing the composition, make one photograph focused on the nearest object, another focused on the middle object, and a third focused on the farthest object.

Now compare the photographs.

Notice how the visual emphasis changes even though you never moved the camera.

You may also notice something similar to what I discovered while practicing with focus points: each photograph can tell a slightly different story simply because you changed what received the viewer's attention.

Next, repeat the exercise with a smaller aperture and observe how much more of the scene appears acceptably sharp.

That simple experiment demonstrates the relationship between focus, aperture, and depth of field far more effectively than memorizing a page of terminology.

After that, experiment with continuous autofocus.

Photograph someone walking toward you, a pet moving across the room, a passing car, or another predictable moving subject.

The goal is not to create a masterpiece.

The goal is to watch what the camera does and begin understanding how the autofocus system responds.

Sharpness Is a Tool, Not a Rule

There is one final point worth making because photography can become unnecessarily technical when we forget why we picked up the camera in the first place.

Not every successful photograph needs to be perfectly sharp from edge to edge.

Moving water may intentionally contain blur.

A cyclist or automobile photographed using a panning technique may remain relatively sharp while the background streaks with motion.

Fog may soften an entire landscape.

A shallow depth of field may intentionally allow most of the image to drift beautifully out of focus.

A softly blurred foreground may frame a subject.

Sometimes softness itself contributes to mood.

Technical sharpness matters when it supports the photograph you are trying to make.

It is not a diploma proving that you have become a photographer.

The better question is:

Is the part of the photograph that needs to be sharp, sharp?

And perhaps even more importantly:

Does the photograph communicate what you wanted the viewer to see or feel?

That brings us back to the larger idea behind this Photography 101 series.

Learning camera controls is not really about collecting settings or memorizing terminology.

It is about gradually removing the camera from between you and the photograph.

The better you understand focus, exposure, camera modes, and the other tools available to you, the less time you spend wondering which button to press and the more time you can spend noticing light, expression, movement, atmosphere, and those fleeting moments that made you reach for the camera in the first place.

The camera is still the tool.

Seeing is the real skill.

Sources & Further Reading

The technical information in this article was informed and verified using manufacturer documentation and educational resources from Canon and Nikon:

• Canon U.S.A. – EOS Rebel T6 Support, Specifications & Instruction Manuals
  Covers the EOS Rebel T6 autofocus system, including One-Shot AF, Predictive AI Servo AF, AI Focus AF, manual and automatic AF-point selection, and its nine autofocus points. Canon EOS Rebel T6 Support & Manuals

• Canon U.S.A. – Introduction to Dual Pixel Autofocus
  Explains continuous autofocus, subject tracking, focus-point selection, and how modern autofocus systems follow moving subjects. Canon: Intro to Dual Pixel Autofocus

• Nikon – Photography Glossary
  Reference information covering autofocus servo operation, AF lock, single and dynamic autofocus points, subject tracking, and depth of field. Nikon Photography Glossary

• Nikon – Understanding Maximum Aperture
  Explains the relationship between aperture and depth of field, including how selective focus and background blur can direct the viewer's attention within a photograph. Nikon: Understanding Maximum Aperture
  
  

Photography 101: Camera Modes Explained

Photo was generated by AI

Photography 101: Camera Modes Explained

Learning to Take Control Without
Feeling Overwhelmed

Article researched 

by Michael A. Buccilli

When you first begin moving beyond casual photography, a camera can suddenly look a lot more complicated than it did before.

There are buttons everywhere.

Menus inside menus.

Numbers changing on the screen.

Letters such as P, Av, Tv, A, S, and M appear on the mode dial, and somehow you are supposed to know what all of them mean.

If that sounds familiar, I understand.

I had been taking pictures for most of my life when I decided that I wanted to pursue photography professionally. While studying photography through the Art Institute of Pittsburgh online, I used grant and student-loan funds to purchase a Canon EOS Rebel T6 kit.

I remember looking at that camera, seeing all of the buttons, menus, settings, and choices available to me and having one immediate reaction:

This was going to be a lot more complicated than simply pointing a camera at something and pressing the shutter button.

For a while, the camera itself could feel intimidating.

But something changed as I worked through my courses.

I practiced.

Then I practiced some more.

I experimented with settings I did not completely understand yet. I photographed subjects one way, changed something, photographed them again, and looked at what had changed. Sometimes the result was better. Sometimes it was worse.

But every attempt taught me something.

Eventually, the menus became less intimidating. The buttons began to have a purpose. Settings that had once looked like technical clutter became creative choices.

Most importantly, I became less afraid to experiment.

That is one of the things I want beginners to understand early in this Photography 101 series:

You do not need to understand everything about your camera before you begin using it creatively.

Photography becomes much easier when you allow yourself to experiment, study the results, make adjustments, and try again.

And ultimately, the hardest question in photography usually is not:

What camera mode should I use?

It is:

Why am I photographing this subject, and what do I want the photograph to convey?

That question is where photography begins to become something more than camera operation.

From Exposure to Creative Control

In the first Photography 101 article, we explored the three fundamental components of exposure:

Aperture

Shutter speed

ISO

Together, they influence how light and motion are rendered in a photograph.

Aperture affects the amount of light passing through the lens and plays an important role in depth of field.

Shutter speed determines how long the camera records light and can freeze movement or allow motion to blur.

ISO affects how the camera handles the available light and can help us work in darker conditions, although increasingly high ISO settings may introduce more visible noise.

Understanding those three controls gives us the foundation.

Camera modes determine how responsibility for those controls is divided between you and the camera.

Sometimes the camera makes most of the decisions.

Sometimes you make one important decision and allow the camera to calculate another.

Sometimes you make nearly all of the exposure decisions yourself.

None of these approaches is automatically better photography.

They are simply different tools.

Before Choosing a Camera Mode, Ask Why

Imagine standing beside a quiet lake shortly before sunrise.

Mist is drifting across the water.

The mountains in the distance are beginning to catch the morning light.

There are many technically correct ways to photograph that scene.

But what attracted you to it?

Was it the enormous depth of the landscape?

The reflection in the water?

The mist?

The golden light?

The peaceful feeling of standing alone beside the lake?

Perhaps you want everything from the rocks in the foreground to the mountains in the distance to feel sharp and expansive.

Or perhaps a weathered plant along the shoreline caught your attention, and you want the background to dissolve into softness behind it.

Those two photographs may be made from almost the same location.

But they communicate different ideas.

That is why learning photography cannot end with memorizing settings.

Your creative intention should eventually guide the settings you choose.

The camera mode simply helps you get there.

Auto Mode: Sometimes Getting the
Photograph Matters Most

Auto Mode generally gives your camera control over most of the exposure process.

Depending on the camera, it may determine aperture, shutter speed, ISO, white balance, flash behavior, and other settings.

Many beginning photographers are encouraged to leave Auto Mode as quickly as possible.

I do not think Auto needs to be treated like an enemy.

Suppose you are walking through a park and suddenly see something happening that may last only a few seconds.

Perhaps wildlife appears unexpectedly.

Maybe a child does something funny.

Perhaps light suddenly breaks through the clouds in an extraordinary way.

If you are uncertain about your settings and the choice is between using Auto or missing the photograph entirely, use Auto.

A photograph captured in Auto Mode is more valuable than a photograph you never made.

Auto is especially useful while someone is becoming comfortable simply handling a camera.

But Auto also has an important limitation.

Your camera can evaluate light.

It can identify subjects.

Modern cameras can perform extraordinary calculations.

What the camera cannot fully understand is why the scene matters to you.

It does not know whether you want the background soft.

It does not know whether movement should be frozen.

It does not know whether that dark silhouette is a mistake or exactly what you intended.

Those decisions belong to the photographer.

And that is why we eventually begin moving beyond Auto.

Program Mode: A Comfortable First Step

Program Mode is usually identified by the letter:

P

I think Program Mode deserves more attention than it often receives.

Some beginning photographers believe that moving beyond Auto means they should immediately switch to Manual Mode.

That is not necessary.

Program Mode provides an excellent middle ground.

The camera generally chooses the aperture and shutter-speed combination needed for the exposure, while giving you greater access to other photographic controls.

Depending on your camera, you may be able to control things such as ISO, exposure compensation, white balance, autofocus behavior, and other settings.

Some cameras also allow you to alter the aperture and shutter-speed pairing while maintaining a similar overall exposure.

Interestingly, the Canon EOS Rebel T6 that I learned with includes a shiftable Program AE mode, along with shutter-priority, aperture-priority, and manual exposure modes. [1]

Program Mode allows you to begin taking responsibility for the photograph without asking you to control everything simultaneously.

Think of it as removing the training wheels one at a time rather than throwing the bicycle down a hill and hoping for the best.

Aperture Priority: Controlling How
the Photograph Feels

Aperture Priority is one of the camera modes I think many photographers can become comfortable with fairly quickly.

Depending on the camera brand, it may be marked:

A

or

Av

Canon commonly uses Av, while several other manufacturers use A.

In Aperture Priority Mode, you choose the aperture, or f-number, and the camera determines the shutter speed needed for the exposure. How ISO behaves depends on whether you have selected a fixed ISO or enabled Auto ISO and on the specific camera. [2][4]

Why is that useful?

Because aperture has such a strong influence over the visual character of a photograph.

Imagine Photographing a Person

You want the person's face sharp.

But you do not want the parking lot, fence, trees, signs, and everything else behind them competing for attention.

A wider aperture can help create a shallower depth of field, allowing the background to become softer.

Now your viewer's attention stays where you wanted it:

on the person.

Now Turn Toward a Landscape

You are standing before a sweeping valley.

Wildflowers occupy the foreground.

Rolling hills extend through the middle distance.

Mountains rise along the horizon.

Now you may want considerably more of the photograph to appear sharp.

A smaller aperture such as f/8 or f/11 might make more sense, depending on your lens, focusing distance, and other conditions.

Sony's photography guidance illustrates exactly this creative difference: wider apertures can produce stronger background defocus, while smaller apertures can help render more of a landscape clearly. [2]

The important point is not memorizing a particular f-number.

It is understanding why you chose it.

You are using aperture because depth of field contributes to what you want the photograph to communicate.

That is creative control.

Watch the Shutter Speed in Aperture Priority

There is one important habit to develop when using Aperture Priority.

Watch the shutter speed your camera chooses.

As the light becomes dimmer, your camera may select slower shutter speeds.

Eventually, the shutter may become slow enough that camera movement or subject movement causes unwanted blur.

At that point you have choices.

You might:

open the aperture farther,

increase ISO,

use Auto ISO with appropriate limits,

steady the camera,

or place the camera on a tripod.

Aperture Priority allows the camera to help you, but you still need to pay attention to what it is doing.

You and the camera are working together.

Shutter Priority: When Movement
Becomes the Story

Shutter Priority reverses the arrangement.

On many cameras it is marked:

S

Canon generally calls it:

Tv

Tv refers to Time Value.

In this mode, you select the shutter speed and the camera determines the aperture needed for the exposure. Again, ISO behavior depends on your camera configuration. [3][4]

This mode becomes particularly useful when movement is central to the photograph.

Freezing Action

Imagine photographing a bird flying across the water.

Your main concern may not be depth of field.

It may be stopping the movement of the wings.

A fast shutter speed can help freeze that motion.

The same idea applies to:

sports,

wildlife,

children running,

moving vehicles,

waves crashing,

or any other fast-moving subject.

Showing Motion

But movement does not always need to be frozen.

Suppose you are photographing a waterfall.

You may want the water to remain visibly textured and energetic.

Or you may want it to become smooth and almost silky.

Those two interpretations require different shutter-speed choices.

A slower shutter speed allows movement to register during the exposure.

Sony's shutter-speed guidance demonstrates this relationship clearly: fast shutter speeds can freeze movement, while longer exposures can deliberately record motion. [3]

Neither approach is more correct.

The question remains:

What are you trying to convey?

When Shutter Priority Reaches the Lens Limit

Shutter Priority also requires awareness.

Suppose you select an extremely fast shutter speed in low light.

Your camera attempts to compensate by opening the aperture.

But lenses can only open so far.

If the lens reaches its maximum aperture and there still is not enough light, the camera may no longer be able to produce the exposure you intended without another adjustment.

You may need to increase ISO, introduce more light, or select a slower shutter speed.

This is one of the reasons photography becomes easier once aperture, shutter speed, and ISO stop feeling like three unrelated settings.

They work together.

Manual Mode: Taking Direct Control

Manual Mode is represented by:

M

In Manual Mode, the photographer selects both aperture and shutter speed.

ISO may also be selected manually.

However, modern cameras add another useful possibility:

Manual Mode with Auto ISO.

When that feature is available and enabled, you can choose the aperture and shutter speed while allowing the camera to adjust ISO as lighting conditions change. Nikon, for example, documents this behavior in its Auto ISO system. [4]

Traditional full Manual Mode gives you direct control over aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.

That can be extremely useful when consistency matters.

When Manual Mode Makes Sense

Imagine photographing a landscape from a tripod.

The lighting is relatively stable.

You have time.

You want a particular depth of field.

You want a particular shutter speed.

You want to keep ISO low.

Manual Mode allows you to establish those settings deliberately.

It can also be useful for:

night photography,

long exposures,

studio photography,

flash photography,

astrophotography,

panoramas,

and situations where you do not want the camera continually changing exposure between photographs.

But there is something important beginners should hear:

Manual Mode is not a diploma.

You do not graduate from Aperture Priority and become a "real photographer" because you reached M on the dial.

Professional photographers use whatever mode solves the photographic problem in front of them.

Sometimes that is Manual.

Sometimes it is Aperture Priority.

Sometimes it is Shutter Priority.

Sometimes it is Program.

And yes, sometimes getting the photograph matters more than proving you manually selected every setting.

Exposure Compensation: Telling
the Camera, "Almost"

Once you begin using Program, Aperture Priority, or Shutter Priority, another control becomes extremely useful:

Exposure Compensation

You will usually recognize it by the:

+ / -

symbol.

Exposure compensation allows you to tell the camera:

"I see the exposure you selected, but I want the photograph a little brighter."

Or:

"I want it a little darker."

Your camera's meter is trying to interpret the scene according to the information it receives.

Sometimes that interpretation is not what you intended.

Imagine photographing a bright snowy landscape.

The camera may attempt to darken the scene more than you want.

Positive exposure compensation can help move the exposure brighter.

Now imagine a dramatic sunset.

Perhaps you want the sky slightly darker so the color and atmosphere remain rich.

Negative exposure compensation may help accomplish that.

Current Canon cameras provide exposure compensation in their automatic exposure modes, although the exact controls and available ranges vary by camera model. [5]

The important lesson is that automatic and semi-automatic modes do not mean surrendering creative control.

You can still tell the camera:

That is close, but this is what I actually want.

So Which Camera Mode Should You Use?

Instead of asking:

Which camera mode is best?

Ask:

What matters most in this photograph?

If the moment is happening quickly and you simply need the photograph:

Auto Mode may be enough.

If you want more control without managing aperture and shutter speed individually:

Try Program Mode.

If depth of field is central to the photograph:

Try Aperture Priority.

If motion is central:

Try Shutter Priority.

If you need complete consistency or want direct control over both aperture and shutter speed:

Try Manual Mode.

Notice that none of these answers begins with:

"Because professional photographers are supposed to use..."

The photograph determines the tool.

Not the other way around.

A Simple Camera-Mode Exercise

You can read about camera modes for hours.

But at some point, you need to turn the dial.

Choose an ordinary subject.

It does not need to be spectacular.

A flower.

A coffee cup.

A person.

A tree.

A car parked outside.

Anything that allows you to make several photographs without rushing.

Begin in Auto Mode.

Take a picture.

Look at the settings the camera selected.

Then switch to Program Mode.

Take another photograph and explore what additional controls become available.

Next, switch to Aperture Priority.

Choose a wide aperture and take a picture.

Then choose a smaller aperture and photograph the same subject again.

Compare the background and depth of field.

Watch what happens to the shutter speed.

Then switch to Shutter Priority.

Photograph something moving if possible.

Try a faster shutter speed.

Then try a slower one.

Finally, switch to Manual Mode.

Try to create an exposure yourself using what you learned about aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.

Do not worry if some of the photographs fail.

In fact, I hope a few do.

A photograph that does not work can be an excellent teacher if you ask why it failed.

Was the shutter speed too slow?

Was the depth of field too shallow?

Was the ISO unnecessarily high?

Was the photograph too bright?

Too dark?

Did the camera focus somewhere you did not intend?

Each mistake gives you another piece of information.

That is exactly how the camera becomes less intimidating.

Practice Changes the Relationship

I did not become more comfortable with my Canon T6 because one day I suddenly understood every item in the manual.

It happened gradually.

I learned something.

I tried it.

I made photographs.

Then I learned something else.

Over time, the camera stopped feeling like something I might operate incorrectly.

I became willing to experiment.

That willingness is important because photography requires curiosity.

Sometimes you need to ask:

"What happens if I change this?"

And then take the photograph and find out.

Eventually, something interesting happens.

You stop thinking so much about the camera.

Instead, you start looking at the world in front of it.

The Camera Is the Tool. The
Photograph Is the Goal.

Technical knowledge matters.

Understanding aperture matters.

Understanding shutter speed matters.

Understanding ISO, autofocus, lenses, metering, and composition matters.

But the purpose of learning those things is not to become excellent at operating camera controls.

The purpose is to make those controls increasingly invisible.

You want to understand your camera well enough that when something catches your attention, you can begin asking more important questions.

Why did I stop here?

What caught my eye?

What am I trying to show?

What should be included?

What should be left outside the frame?

Should this moment feel peaceful?

Powerful?

Lonely?

Joyful?

Chaotic?

Intimate?

Expansive?

Once you know the answer, your technical decisions begin serving the photograph.

Aperture becomes a way to control attention.

Shutter speed becomes a way to interpret movement.

ISO becomes part of the solution to working with available light.

Camera modes become shortcuts for deciding which controls matter most right now.

And the camera begins doing what it was always supposed to do:

helping you show someone else what you saw.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dial

If you are still using Auto Mode, there is nothing wrong with that.

But try turning the dial.

Spend an afternoon in Program Mode.

On another day, use Aperture Priority.

Photograph movement in Shutter Priority.

When you feel ready, experiment with Manual.

Do not wait until you completely understand a mode before trying it.

Experimentation is part of understanding it.

The letters on the dial that once looked like technical code eventually become familiar choices:

P. Av. Tv. M.

Or:

P. A. S. M.

They stop being intimidating because you understand what each one helps you accomplish.

That is progress.

Not memorizing every menu.

Not using Manual Mode all the time.

Not having the most expensive camera.

Progress is reaching the point where you can look at a subject, recognize what matters about it, and begin making deliberate choices about how you want to photograph it.

What's Next in Photography 101?

We have now taken two important steps.

First, we learned about the exposure triangle:

Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.

Now we have explored the shooting modes that help us control those settings.

But even a perfectly exposed photograph can still disappoint us if the subject is not sharp where we intended.

So next, we are going to tackle one of the most common questions in photography:

Why isn't my picture sharp?

In the next installment:

Photography 101: How to Get Sharp Photos — Understanding Focus, Autofocus Modes, and Focus Points

We will explore:

autofocus versus manual focus,

single and continuous autofocus,

focus points,

subject tracking,

camera movement,

subject movement,

and how to give your camera a much better chance of focusing exactly where you want it.

Because once exposure and focus begin working together, something wonderful happens.

You spend less time fighting the camera.

And more time making photographs.

Reference Citations:

  [1] Canon U.S.A. — EOS Rebel T6 Support: Canon confirms that the T6 includes shiftable Program AE, Shutter-priority AE, Aperture-priority AE, and Manual exposure. Canon EOS Rebel T6 Support

  [2] Sony — Aperture and A-Mode: explains aperture priority, f-numbers, background defocus, and landscape depth of field. Sony Aperture and A-Mode Guide

  [3] Sony — Shutter Speed and S-Mode: explains freezing motion versus intentionally recording movement with slower shutter speeds. Sony Shutter Speed and S-Mode Guide

  [4] Nikon — Understanding Auto ISO: particularly useful for explaining how Auto ISO can function in P, A, S, and Manual modes. Nikon Understanding Auto ISO

  [5] Canon — Exposure Modes and Compensation: Canon's current cameras continue the familiar P, Tv, Av, and M exposure-mode structure and provide exposure compensation in automatic exposure modes. Canon EOS R6 Support and Exposure Controls

Osee Schrecongost

Osee Schrecongost – Society for

American Baseball Research (sabr.org)

This article was written by Bill Nowlin

Article researched by Carrie Birdsong

If there ever were a batter that was bound together in life and death, it was probably pitcher Rube Waddell and catcher Osee Schrecongost.  They were both born in small communities in western Pennsylvania, on opposite sides of the Allegheny National Forest, and a little less than 100 miles from each other.  They both broke into the majors with the same team on the same day.  For four seasons (1902 though 1905), they both served for the Philadelphia Athletics as teammates, batteymates, and roommates.  They both ended their professional careers in the same year, 1910, and they both died within a little more than three months of each other – neither of them having reached the age of 40.

Waddell was a star pitcher, and has been a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame since 1946.  “Schreck” – as he was typically called – was often a team’s backup catcher, both in the minor leagues and the majors, but he got in a fair amount of work and was both a good hitter and an excellent defender.

Osee Freeman Schrecongost is an unusual name, though his surname was not uncommon, particularly in Pennsylvania in his day.  With a brother two years older name Harry and a sister two years younger named Annie, one might wonder today where the Osee came from.  there have been numerous spellings of his name, both first and last, and the spellings differ on some records to this day.  He was born on April 11, 1875, in New Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a Clarion County borough about 60 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.  Two years later he was baptized in Mt. Lebanon (under 10 miles from Pittsburgh in a southwesterly direction) and is listed in the baptismal records of the Mt. Lebanon United Presbyterian Church as Osie Freeman Schreckenhost.

His family appears in the 1880 United States census living in Redbank Township, Clarion County, Pennsylvania, not be confused with another Red Bank about 20 miles further east.  His parents were listed as Naman Shrecongost, a miner age 29, and his wife, Sarah C. Shrecongost, 26.  Their three children were Harry H., Osee F., and Annie I.  They also had three boarders in their household at the time, all three of whom were miners: Adam and John Huffman and Emet Murphy.  The area was one of coal mines and most of the people in their neighborhood were miners.  Listed only a couple of residences away was another Naman Shrecongost and his wife, Sadie, both a few years younger but without children.  Newspapers of the day did refer to Osee’s father as “Big Norman.”

On our man’s gravestone in nearby Kittaning Cemetery, the marker – not infallible itself – presents his name as Osee F. Schrencongost.  SABR member Dan O’Brien interviewed grandson Charles Dundas and family genealogist Christine Crawford-Oppenheimer and concluded that the correct rendition of his name is F. Osee Schrecongost, that his father’s name was spelled Naaman and that his mother Sarah was born Sarah Caroline Protzman.  The Schrecongost name was German.  Osee was pronounced “Oh-See.”[1]

What we’re most interested of course, is his life in baseball.  Josh Walzak, a writer for the New Bethlehem newspaper, the Leader-Vindictator, wrote a lengthy feature on Schreck in its September 8, 1999, issue.  He says the family lived in Fairmount City, less than two miles from New Bethlehem, and that the young man attended school there until about the age of 10, when the family moved to an apartment on Broad Street in New Bethlehem.  Osee went to work in the mines as a teenager, but played baseball too, and was a standout with the town teams of 1893 and 1894.  The newspaper at the time spelled his name Ossee Scheckengost.

In 1895 Osee struck out on his own, moving to Williamsport to play semipro ball for a team sponsored by the Domestic Sewing Machin Co.  He wound up playing for the Demorest Base Ball Club of Williamsport, which became the championship team in Central Pennsylvania League ball that year.  The Philadelphia Inquirer carried him in box scores as Schrencongost, though more often in the lineups as “Schr’st” and “Sch’st,” and the like.  Virtually the whole Demorest team was signed again for 1896[2].  Schreck started 1896 by hitting a home run on Opening Day, May 16.  While no league statistics could be located, Sporting Life did note at year end, in its December 2, 1896, issue, that the ”Demorest Manufacturing Company will put one of the strongest ball teams in the field next year that has ever represented the city of Williamsport on the local diamond.  If the Centra Pa. League in not reorganized again the team will play independent ball, and will probably travel in a private car and make trips through the South and West, and will rival the Page Fence Giants.  [The Giants were one of the best black teams of the 1890s.]  The Demorest team will be composed of a set of gentlemanly players, and will contain some of last year’s players.”  Among them, it was noted, was F.O. Schrecongost, the young and coming player, [who] will cover first bag and act as change catcher.”

Schrecongost had an active year in 1897 and it’s a little difficult to track just where he played and when.  His record shows him playing for Augusta in the Maine State League, possibly as early as the later part of 1896[3].  He’s been on a Brockton (Massachusetts) contract, somehow, but was released to Augusta on a temporary contract on May 6[4]/  he was returned to Brockton and then released by Brockton on July 6[5].  He next turned up with Fall River, Massachusetts, the New England League, playing on July 10 but appearing in only four games for the Indians, hitting .353.  A few weeks later the Boston Herald noted that he was now playing for the Shamokin club in the Central Pennsylvania League[6].  The Coal Heavers folded, though, “owing to lack of patronage," September 7[7].  The paper noted that Osee had received offers from both Louisville and Philadelphia.  Indeed, the very next day – September 8 – he shows up catching for Louisville (presented as Sch’t in the box score).

That was the day Schrecongost first played in the major leagues, debuting with the National League’s Louisville Colonels on September 8, 1897.  He was 0-for-3 in the game, his only one that year.  He was charged with a passed ball.  Pitcher Rube Waddell made his big-league debut in the same game, Baltimore beating Louisville, 5-1.  The syndicated news report from Baltimore described it as “a dull and uninteresting game.:  Waddell, it was written, “pitched a good game, but worked against some very hard luck.”[8]  How good it was could be debatable, given the four bases on balls Rube doled out and the 11 hits he surrendered.  Waddell also hit a batter.  He struck out two.

The Baltimore Sun noted, “Catcher Schrecongost was merely given a trial by Louisville yesterday, and while he caught a good game he did not show any extraordinary talent, and his batting was rather weak.  President Harry Pulliam refused to buy him, and Schrecongost left for home in Fall River, last night.  Mr. Pulliam said, ‘He caught well, but we have two catchers already who are just as good, if not better, and we did not need him.’ The Sun said that Pulliam did like Waddell and would keep him.  “He has much to learn, but shows promise….”[9]

The Sun also reported that a Chicago paper had sent a telegram to Pulliam asking, “Is that catcher’s name on the level?”  It was only one of a number Pulliam received when sports editors at various newspapers saw the full name Schrecongost.

That this first meeting between Schrecongost and Waddell ultimately led to a lifelong, intertwined relationship is remarkable in that they’d only been in the same place at the same time for about 24 hours, and, as noted in the newspaper, neither of them knew the other and hardly had anyone else known who they were.  The Washington Evening Star reprinted a story from Baltimore:

“That was a peculiar state  of affairs in the Louisville team on Wednesday; in which the pitcher did not know his catcher’s name, the catcher was ignorant of the pitcher’s name, and the members of the team, including the manager himself, were unacquainted with the names of either of the young men  composing the club’s battery for the day.  Waddell only joined the team in Washington and Schrecongost joined the team a short time before the game, having come here on trial.  This all-around ignorance of names was shown when some spectators in the grand stand asked the catcher who was pitching.  ‘I don’t know.  I never saw him before,’ was Schrecongost’s reply.  Presently Waddell came back to the bench and some one asked him who the catcher was, and he replied, ‘Couldn’t tell you – first time I ever saw him.’”

“ ‘Who will be in the points today,’ was asked of Manager Clarke before the game by the Sun reporter.  ‘This man will pitch’ he replied, pointing to the name ‘Weddell’ in the score card, and that tall fellow over there will catch.  I don’t know what his name is, ‘But he called to Schrecongost and got that young man to spell his name out for the newspaper man, regardless of how long it delayed the game.

“When asked if ‘Weddell’ was the correct name, Manager Clarke replied, ‘Don’t know; you will have to ask him.’ “[10]

Some listings also show Schreck as having been with both Williamsport and the Sunbury Pirates (both of the Central Pennsylvania League) at one point or another, in addition to Shamokin.  There were quite a few shifts in team within the league that year.  Once again, in a postseason (November 6) issue, Sporting Life anticipated him playing for Williamsport in 1898.

It had been quite a year.  “My minor league experience was a nightmare,” he said.  “I played with four different minor leagues in one season.  The manager of the Augusta club of the Maine State league owed me $70.  When I asked him for it he told me that I had been fined that amount, and I didn’t get a cent.  When I hooked up with the Williamsport team the manager soon owed me $50, and he just tacked a fine that took all that was coming to me.  I have no growl coming about my experience in Youngstown.”[11]

Schreck played for three teams in 1898.  He began the season with Cedar Rapids (Iowa) in the Western Association, but Cedar Rapids disbanded on June 9 and the whole league followed suit on the 26^th.  Between the two June dates, Schrecongost caught for the team in Ottumwa, Iowa.  After the league folded, he played the rest of the time with the last-place Youngest (Ohio) Puddlers in the Inter-State League.  Baseball-Reference.com has him hitting .280 in 78 games for Youngstown, but the October 8, Sporting Life said he had led the team with a .310 average.  He hit a couple of homers, on July 5 and September 14.  As it happened, the very next day, Stanley Robison, owner of the NL franchise in Cleveland, came to look over both him and pitcher Charlie Knepper.

Schreck was described as “the premier backstop of the league” and was sold to the Spiders for $300 in a deal announced on September 27, getting into ten games for them and hitting .314 with ten RBIs[12].  Cleveland manager Patsy Tebeau was high on him: “We will use Schrecongost in almost every game next year … for his hitting ability.  He is an Indian at the bat, biting at everything, high, low, out, or in, and very often making doubles and triples off wild pitches.  It is next to impossible for a twirler to get ‘Schreck’ in a hole, for all pitching looks alike to him.”[13]

In 1899, Schrecongost trained with Tebeau’s team in Hot Springs, Arkansas, but shuttled back and forth from Cleveland to St. Louis during the year.  Tebeau continued to boost him in the springtime and it was written that even as they arrived for training, “[w]hen Tebeau introduced Schrecongost to the people at the depot he added after each hand shake: ‘Here is the little boy who is to lead out team in batting this year.’  Patsy hopes to make a change first baseman out of Schreck, and to use him in nearly every game.”[14]  Schreck wasn’t all that little; at 5-feet-10 he stood two inches taller than Tebeau, and at 180 (a weight he admittedly may not have yet attained) he had nearly 20 pounds on his manager.

Early on, on March 28, 1899, the entire Cleveland ballclub was transferred to St. Louis after the league expelled the earlier St. Louis owners and installed a new group in its place.  Schrecongost was one of 16 Spiders – including Tebeau – so assigned.  It’s a story we’ll not go into here, but brothers Frank DeHaas Robison and Stanley Robison each owned shares in both ballclubs in 1899, Frank had founded the Cleveland club, and he and Stanley were part of a group that purchased the bankrupts St. Louis Browns, and then moved most of the better players to St. Louis, loading up the team they dubbed the Perfectos but leaving Cleveland with a team that finished 12^th with a record (the worst in major league history) of 20-134.

In the early going, Osee appeared in six 1899 games for St. Louis without a hit.  On June 5 he and Frank Bates were assigned to Cleveland.  There were “Rumors of a Rumpus” between Tebeau and Ed McKean which led to the trade.  In any event, once he joined the Spiders in New York, in time to get into the June 7 game, it was soon reported that “Schrecongost made an instantaneous hit here.  Like Tebeau, Schreck plays ball all the time.”[15]  The trade came in time for him to get his photograph published in Base Ball magazine over the caption: “Ossee Schrecongost, The Rising Young Catcher of the Cleveland Club.”[16]  He had “fought his way into popularity here [Cleveland] by the desperately earnest manner in which he plunges into every game.  He is a second Pat Tebeau in this respect, forgetting everything else when he is playing ball, but the desire to win.”[17]  The Cleveland club was sometimes given the nickname the Exiles in the national press, and the Washington Post called the catcher the “Ghost.”[18]  Schreck even beat St. Louis, winning one of those 20 games for the Exiles, with three hits – including a triple – in a 3-1 win over the Perfectos on June 25 in St. Louis.

But then, on July 31, Osee was back with St. Louis, having arrived that morning.  Though indeed both clubs were owned by Robisons, it was reported that “Tebeau ‘purchased’ him yesterday from President Stanley Robison of the Cleveland Club.”[19]  Schrecongost played the rest of the ’99 season for St. Louis, and is listed as – overall – hitting .313 in his time with Cleveland and .286 for St. Louis, with two homers but otherwise not that much power though August 28 he hit a double and a triple in the same game, a 14-12 loss to Washington.  He played a mixture of first base and catcher, sometimes playing first when Lou Criger was catching.  And there was some passion in Schreck’s play.  He even got into a fight with teammate Mike Donlin at the Grand Central depot in Cincinnati on August 7 just before the train pulled out for Pittsburgh.   Schreck was upset that two of Donlin’s “rifle-shot throws to the plate” had been low and struck Schreck in the shins.  He said something to Donlin, three years his junior, at the station and “quick as a flash the Californian turned and whipped his right across the catcher’s jaw, who went down in a heap.  When he regained his feet he started for Donlin, who again felled him like a log.  Schrecongost again got up and an exchange of vicious blows followed, but Donlin was getting the best of it when Schrecongost stopped to pick up a coupling pin.”  Several players and some bystanders stepped in at that point to disarm Schreck[20].

In 1900 Schrecongost played for Buffalo, in the one year that Ban Johnson’s Western League was named the American League but considered a minor league.  In 1901 Johnson founded a different American League, the first year of the AL, which has lasted into the 21^st century.  The 25-year-old Schrecongost had been farmed out to the Buffalo Bisons by St. Louis before the season began in May.  He played in 125 games, batting .282, catching more than 75 percent of the games and playing first base the rest of the time[21]. 

Schreck joined that new American League in 1901, signing on early with the Boston Americans (manager Jimmy Collins, a Buffalo-area native, knew of his work), but destined from the start to be backup catcher behind Lou Criger.  On March 4 it was reported that he would break his contract with St. Louis and jump to the new league to play for Boston[22].  Acknowledging that he was a hitting catcher, the April 14 Boston Journal ran a trick photograph showing two overlapping images of Schrecongost both batting and catching at the same time.

In fact, he performed admirably, appearing in 86 games – ten more than Criger – and hitting for a .304 average, exceptional for a catcher in those days and well above the .278 team average.  Criger was surer on defense, however, and – no small consideration – was Cy Young’s favorite catcher.  Cy Young was 33-10 that year, and if he wanted a personal catcher, that was fine with manager Jimmy Collins.  All three – Schreck, Criger, and Young – had been on the Perfectos in 1899, and the latter two played for St. Louis in 1900 while Schreck was in Buffalo.  Charlie Hemphill was the fourth St. Louis player to jump leagues and come to Boston.

Scheck did take part in the first triple play in franchise history, on August 7, 1901, at Baltimore, a 1-5-2-6-1 affair.

The day before the season ended, owner Charles Somers re-signed Criger and Young for 1902, but not Schrecongost, Hemphill, or Tommy Dowd.  Schreck played for Cleveland (an America League city from the start), and then the Philadelphia Athletics in 1902.  Exactly why Somers didn’t want to retain Schrecongost, we don’t know, but a Boston Herald report a year later – enthusing over his 1902 season – said that Schreck had ”proved a most unreliable man for Boston last season.”[23]  In any event Boston traded him to Cleveland on November 16 for Candy LaChance, who became the first baseman for the Bostons for the next few years.  Cleveland fully intended to use Schreck at first base, rather than a catcher.

Schrecongost picked up a little extra work in the preseason of 1902, coaching the batteries and the hitters for the University of Virginia baseball team in Charlottesville[24].

Though he was hitting .338 for Cleveland after 18 games, playing first base exclusively, Schrecongost was released on May 13.  It’s a bit of a mystery why, but as it worked out Cleveland added Charlie Hickman a few weeks later and Hickman wound up batting .378[25].  Schreck signed as a free agent with the Philadelphia Athletics on May 22, and appeared in 79 games for them (71 as catcher), batting .324[26].  For a catcher, who presumably had a good eye for the strike zone, he didn’t walk that much, just 102 times in 3,501 career plate appearances.  His career batting average was .271 and his on-base percentage .297.

Athletics manager Connie Mack had tried to get Schreck the year before, according to a few April 1901 newspaper stories[27].  Now, in 1902, Mack had his man.  In the first few years of building the American League, there were transactions and transitions that occurred for reasons that are opaque to us today.

A few weeks after he joined Philadelphia Schreck became reunited with Rube Waddell, who joined the Athletics on June 19.  One of their most productive pairings on the field in 1902 came against Boston on July 9 when Bill Dinneen and Waddell each pitched all 17 innings in Boston, a game that went to Waddell, 4-2.  Schreck was 4-for -6 and was involved in couple of the runs.  He drove in the first Athletics run and then tripled in the top of the 17^th and came in on Rube’s long fly for the fourth run of the game.  His two=out double (some papers had it as a triple) in the ninth won another game for Waddell on July 18 against the White Sox.  He was literally carried off the field on the shoulders of the crowd[28].  And on the 21^st, his single in the ninth gave Waddell another “W.”

Philadelphia won the 1902 pennant and Waddell was 24-7, with a 2.05 ERA, both being the best marks on the club – all those victories coming in two-thirds of a season, given that he’d only arrived a little after mid-June.  Waddell was a pretty good hitter, too, batting .286 in 1902.  Winning the pennant didn’t take the team to the World Series.  It was only the following year, in 1903, when Boston and Pittsburgh squared off in the postseason that the modern “World Series” began.  Schreck and Rube had become roommates and began to have associations away from the Athletics, too.  The two picked up a little more cash playing a pair of later September and early October games for the Camden, New Jersey, ballclub.

Newspapers had generally dropped “Schrecongost” in their stories.  Baseball researchers need to hunt for all three names.  one of Osee's nicknames was "Rocking Horse,” which began when Williamsport teammate Humphries had called him that, in mispronouncing his name, wrote the Philadelphia Inquirer in explaining why cartoonist Charles Bell always showed Schreck on a rocking horse[29].

Boston won the pennant and the World Series in 1903; the Athletics finished second, but 14 ½ games behind.  Schreck fell off sharply in his batting, dropping from .324 to .255.  He played in 13 more games than in 1902, bur drove in 30 percent fewer runs (30 instead of 43) and scored 42 percent fewer runs (26, down from 45).  And in 1904, he played in 75 games and saw his production drop yet further: hitting just .186, driving in 21 and scoring 23.  He improved his defensive work behind home plate, however, climbing in fielding percentage from .960 to .975 and .979.  Schreck had an unusual style of catching one-handed, and somehow managed to deal quite well with Waddell’s unpredictable pitches.  The eccentric pitcher didn’t always throw the ball as signaled.  Teammate Harry Davis wrote of Schreck after Waddell and the catcher had died, “There are very few catchers today who can catch one ball if they are crossed in this manner, particularly with the gloved hand alone, as Schreck invariably did.”[30]

Schreck was also noted for his success in throwing out would-be basestealers.   there was even one time that injuries to the other catchers forced him to play despite a broken finger on his throwing hand, and he managed to throw out a St. Louis batter attempting to steal second on him.  Davis recalled opposing manager Jimmy McAleer exclaiming, “What is the use, they can beat us with a one-armed catcher.[31]

Waddell was clearly a great pitcher, accurate but also deceptive.  Schreck had been known to say that “on days when Rube’s fast ball was right all the batsmen would hit so far under it that he could see an inch or two of daylight when the bat and the ball as the latter shot by.”[32]

Waddell was fortunate to be able to pitch it all in 1903.  During spring training in Jacksonville, he and Schreck were sitting on a pier watching the waves, when Waddell suddenly said, “Ossie, I believe I will jump in here and commit suicide.”  Schreck said, “Go ahead, it will be a good thing.”  He jumped, fully dressed, and narrowly missed several piles sticking out of the water which had long spikes on them.  “When he came up he walked out on the beach and, taking a soggy baseball, proceeded to amuse the spectators by splitting a board with terrific drives from his arm.”  He then went out on the pier and plunged off it again[33].

In July Rube suddenly left the Athletics and started playing for a team of college players in Atlantic City.  He said Schreck was going to join him[34].  Cooler heads prevailed, and Waddell got married and instead and spent Sunday, July 12, with Mr. and Mrs. Schrecongost and a volunteer fireman from Atlantic City name William Stephany[35].  He threw a 2-0 shutout against the White Sox on the 14^th.

They were roommates, but the notion that they were inseparable was decried by Athletics first baseman Harry Davis:  “This was not so.  ‘Rube’ seldom went anywhere with any of the ball players.  He preferred to travel with the many friends he had who were in on way connected with the game.  Schreck only went along when Waddell was asked to bring his catcher with him, and that might happen more than once or twice in a season.”[36]

They were both eccentric, though, and the most widely circulated story regarding them as roommates (sharing a double bed, as baseball roommates often did in those days) is that Waddell refused to sign an Athletics contract one year unless manager Mack agreed to prohibit Schreck from eating animal crackers in bed.  Another version had Schreck voicing that complaint about the Rube[37].

There’s another tale that had Schreck getting a very tough steak at a hotel restaurant in Cleveland.  He sent it back, and the same steak came back again, presented differently.  After the third visit of the steak proved equally difficult to cut, he asked the waiter, “Say, can you get me a hammer and some nails?”  he then took the steak, and the hammer and nails, into the hotel lobby and nailed the steak to the wall[38].

Schreck sold cigars during the winter after the 1902 and 1903 seasons[39].  His application for a liquor license was rejected in April 1904[40].  And the cigar business was said to be why his last name became truncated:  “Owing to the limits of the building in which he does a cigar business, the Athletic backstop sawed his sign name down O. Schreck.”[41]

The year, 1904, had been a true down year, with Schreck hitting that .186, and three of the outs he made came early in the season, on May 5, when he, Waddell and the other Athletics were victims of Cy Young, who pitched a perfect game in Boston.

Osee’s 1905 season got off to a halting start.  He missed most of spring training, with his father dying and then, not long after he returned to camp, his sister, Annie, died and he had to go back home once more[42].

Things turned around 1905.  Schreck hit .271, drove in 45 runs, improved his fielding percentage to .984 in 123 games, and helped roommate Waddell post a 27-10 record with an ERA of 1.48 (leading the league in wins and ERA), and helping boost the Athletics from 1904’s fifth place to the pennant.  He set a record, catching 29 innings in one day, on July 4, 1905, in Boston.  This year was his worst one, though, for working bases on balls.  He came to the plate 429 times and walked just three times.

Schreck caught the first three games of the 1905 World Series against the New York Giants, hitting .222.  Waddell missed the last month of the season and the Series, and the Giants won it in five games.  Alcohol played a factor in things falling apart near the end of Waddell’s season.  Connie Mack was reported to have felt compelled to hire a bodyguard for Waddell “to keep the Rube straight as possible, and now the latter’s catcher, Ossie Schreckengost, has also fallen from grace.”[43]  He had been ”breaking the temperance clause in his contract.”[44]  Schreck’s .222 in the Series may not seem impressive, but was second only to Topsy Hartsel’s .235 on an Athletics team that hit only .155.  The Athletics scored just three runs in the five games, all in Game Two, and all the runs were unearned (Schreck scored two of them); they were shut out three times by Christy Mathewson.

Despite not being present over the final weeks, save for starting in a loss on October 7, Waddell had nonetheless won 27 games, his fourth year in a row as a 20-game winner.  There was discussion that winter of Rube and Schreck performing in a vaudeville show called The Battery[45].  It’s not clear if the show was ever staged.

The Athletics finished fourth in 1906, 12 games out of first place.  Schreck had hit for a better average, .284, and been more productive in the games he played, but he appeared in 98 games, down 25 from 1905.  And there were some suggestions that he hurt the team significantly.  Sportswriter Francis C. Richter, writing from Philadelphia, told Sporting Life: “Mack sent catcher Schreck home from St. Louis because he remained out all night on September 21 without the knowledge or consent of the manager.  The latter made no bones of saying Schreck had misconducted himself frequently during the second half of the season; that his conduct was one of the chief causes of the breakdown, and that Schreck stood suspended for balance of season.”[46]  Schreck said he had done no drinking, but merely stayed overnight with some “old-time German friends.”  One suspects the discipline was not the result of just one infraction.  A month earlier, Richter had written, “Schreck appears to have let down all around.”[47]

Whatever other issues may have obtained, perhaps Schreck had simply passed his peak in terms of play on the field.  The stats he put up in 1907 were comparable to 1906: .272 instead of .284, three fewer RBIs, one more run scored, and he improved on defense to a .985 fielding percentage, remarkably high for a catcher[48].  He did suffer what at first, seemed to be a broken thumb on July 13, but it turned out to be just one which was “mashed”; he still played in 101 games.

In 71 games in 1908, Schreck hit .222 for the Athletics, with only 16 RBIs.  Near the end of the season, he was ready to leave Philadelphia “and outlived his welcome with the fans of that city,” so Mr. Mack placed him on waivers[49].  One wonders what else was going on with the team; an August 1 story in Sporting Life said, “[h]alf a dozen of the Athletics have shaved their heads to stall off baldness.  Schreck mowed a four-inch swathe along the middle of his scalp.”  There were indeed recurring notes in his last few years that made it clear Schreck had a problem with alcohol.

Only one team claimed his off waivers – the White Sox.  He played in six games for them at the tail of 1908 and had three singles in 16 at-bats, suffering a true broken finger in the bottom of the eighth innings on October 2.  A spitball from Big Ed Walsh was the culprit.  Walsh was a 40-game winner in 1908, but lost this one to Addie Joss, who threw a perfect game.  Schreck was on the losing end of another perfecto, and out for the season.  It proved to be his last game in the major league.

On January 25, 1909, Chicago’s owner Charles Comiskey traded Schreck to the Columbus Senators.  He his a far from impressive .203 in 60 games.  Sold on April 19, 1910.  Schreck began the season with Louisville and hit .207 in 71 games before he was traded for Emmet Reilly – sent all the way down to Class D ball, reporting on August 29 to play for the Marion Diggers in the Ohio State League.  There Schreck hit .275 in 29 games, and left Organized Baseball.  His arm had “gone back on him completely,” according to a June 20, 1911, story in the Washington Evening Star that had him playing with an independent team in Ford City, Pennsylvania.  He also did some scouting for Connie Mack – and, along with scout Al Maul, is credited with signing Shoeless Joe Jackson to the Athletics in 1908[50].  According to the story, Schreck started traveling north with Jackson to bring him to Philadelphia, but when they got as far north as Charlotte, Jackson was getting homesick and jumped off the train, hiding from Schreck.

Schreck did sign to play for York in February 1913 and may have played for some teams not in Organized Baseball.  It’s not clear if he ever played for York.

Just as Schreck’s father and sister had died one not long after the other in 1905, so it was for Rube Waddell and Osee Schrecongost in 1914.  It appears that both neglected their health.  Waddell died of tuberculosis in San Antonio on April 1, 1914.  When he learned of the pitcher’s death, Schreck is reported to have said, “The Rube is gone and I am all in.  I might as well join him.”[51]

One hundred days later, on July 9, 1914, Osee Schrecongost died “of a complication of diseases” at Northwestern General Hospital in Philadelphia – the same hospital where Doc Powers, the other main catcher on the Athletics during Schreck’s years, had died in 1909, at age 38, Schreck was 39.

He had collapsed around noon the day before in a local café.  His constitution had been undermined.  The City of Philadelphia death certificate indicates heart disease and Bright’s disease, a kidney disease.  Uremia was noted in newspaper accounts at the time.  The death certificate notes that he was divorced.  He is buried in Kittaning Cemetery.  His mother survived him, and lived until 1927.

After the loss of Rube and Schreck within such a short time span, Sporting Life averred: "Waddell and Schreck, when they were working right were almost unbeatable.  Schreck’s most notable trait was that he was the only catcher who could make Waddell pitch his best.  If their habits had been on par with their professional skill, Rube and Schreck would probably be alive and playing ball today.”[52]

For more information click here: Ossee Schreckengost - Wikipedia

This biography can be found in “New Century, New Team: The 1901 Boston Americans” (SABR, 2013), edited by Bill Nowlin. To order the book, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources noted in this biography, the author also accessed Schrecongost’s player file from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, Retrosheet.org, and Baseball-Reference.com.

Notes

1 Dan O’Brien, “F. Osee Schrecongost,” in David Jones, ed., Deadball Stars of the American League (Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, 2006), 600. Presented in the book is Schrecongost’s signature, and that is the way he signed his name.

2 Sporting Life, December 21, 1895.

3 The Bethlehem Leader-Vindicator reports that he had gone to Augusta later in 1896, though – and more likely – Sporting Life that December had him as up-and-coming still with Williamsport.

4 Sporting Life, May 1 and May 15, 1897.

5 Boston Herald, July 8, 1897.

6 Boston Herald, August 5, 1897.

7 Philadelphia Inquirer, September 8, 1897.

8 See, for instance, the Cleveland Leader of September 9, 1897.

9 Baltimore Sun, September 9, 1897.

10 Washington Evening Star, September 10, 1897.

11 Boston Herald, May 19, 1899.

12 The quotation comes from Sporting Life, September 24, 1898. The date of the release comes from the May 7 Boston Herald.

13 Sporting Life, December 17, 1898.

14 Sporting Life, March 18, 1899.

15 Sporting Life, June 17, 1899.

16 Base Ball, July 8, 1899.

17 Sporting Life, July 15, 1899.

18 Washington Post, August 13, 1899. The “Ghost” nickname seems not to have stuck.

19 Sporting Life, August 5, 1899.

20 Cleveland Leader, August 8, 1899. Over a year later, Donlin offered a whole different take on what happened, saying the row had been in Philadelphia, between Burkett and Schreck, and resulted in those two becoming fast friends, though he did admit to punching Schreck in Pittsburgh. See Sporting Life, November 17, 1900.

21 The May 5, 1900, Boston Herald characterized Schreck’s assignment to Buffalo as having been farmed out by St. Louis, as had other papers such as the Rockford Republic of April 27. He also played eight games in the outfield and one at third base.

22 Boston Herald, March 5, 1901.

23 Boston Herald, September 29, 1902.

24 Washington Post, February 5, 1902.

25 His release was reported in the May 14 Cincinnati Post.

26 There was a moment when it appeared Schreck was going to play for Worcester instead of Philadelphia; the May 20 Cleveland Leader reported that he’d accepted terms with Worcester, but it wasn’t to be.

27 See, for instance, the Pawtucket Times and the Boston Herald of April 26, 1901.

28 Sporting Life, July 26, 1902.

29 Philadelphia Inquirer, August 29, 1904.

30 Springfield Republican, August 2, 1914.

31 Ibid.

32 Sporting Life, April 11, 1914.

33 Denver Post, May 15, 1903.

34 Cincinnati Post, July 10, 1903.

35 Philadelphia Inquirer, July 14, 1903.

36 Washington Post, August 23, 1914.

37 Norman Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball (Lincoln:v Uniersity of Nebraska Press, 2007), 337.

38 Bethlehem Leader-Vindicator, September 8, 1999. Walzak likely got the story from the unidentified November 7, 1929, clipping found in Schrecongost’s player file at the Hall of Fame.

39 Washington Evening Star, October 13, 1903.

40 Philadelphia Inquirer, April 19, 1904.

41 Whether true or not, we are unsure, because the source of the story was reportedly Charles Dryden of the Philadelphia North American, a sportswriter frequently given to wild flights of fanciful fiction. See Sporting Life, June 4, 1904.

42 Norman Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball, 339.

43 Denver Post, September 25, 1905.

44 Ibid.

45 Washington Post, November 5, 1905, and Sporting Life, November 11, 1905.

46 Sporting Life, September 29, 1906.

47 Sporting Life, August 25, 1906.

48 Shrecongost had almost 200 more chances than the second-place catcher in this category. This is almost exclusively due to Philadelphia pitchers striking out almost 200 more batters than the next best pitching staff. Since it is very difficult for a catcher to make an error on a strikeout, Schreck’s outstanding fielding percentage is largely the due to his battery mates.

49 Sporting Life, October 31, 1908.

50 Sporting Life, July 25 and August 1, 1908, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 18, 1912.

51 Bethlehem Leader-Vindicator, September 8, 1999.

52 Sporting Life, July 18, 1914.

Full Name

Freeman Osee Schrecongost

Born

April 11, 1875 at New Bethlehem, PA (USA)

Died

July 9, 1914 at Philadelphia, PA (USA)