Ron Vesely is one of the most successful baseball photographers of his generation. He was the Chicago White Sox team photographer for 37 seasons. He covered 25 World Series for Major League Baseball, The Sporting News, and other clients. More than 6,500 photographs from the early part of his career are part of the permanent collection in the archive at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum library in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Vesely is filled with passion.
I know this because I’ve known him since we were students at Naperville (IL.) Central High School.
Whether it was hockey, cars, or playing bass guitar in a rock n’ roll band, Vesely was always a fastball down the plate. No surrender. “It’s funny, my family just brought that up,” Vesely said during a November 2024 interview at an Oak Park coffee shop. “I never did anything halfway.”
For example, after 1973 high school graduation, Vesely began racing cars at the Oswego Dragway and U.S. 30 Dragstrip in Hobart, IN. He had a 1955 Chevy called Fat Rat and a rare high performance Rebel Machine only produced in 1970 by American Motors Corporation (AMC). AMC changed the name to a more politically correct “Matador” in 1971. Vesely switched gears in 1976. “I started breaking a ton of parts and got stuck at Byron Dragway (in Byron, Il),” he said. “Then I went whole hog, pun intended, into motorcycles.”
Vesely retired from the White Sox following the 2021 season. He plans to ride his Harley-Davidson to all 50 states including Alaska and Hawaii. Because 49 wouldn’t be the Vesely way. “I rode Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica this year (2024),” he said. Using only an iPhone and a GoPro (action cameras, mobile apps) he self-published a 69-page Shutterfly coffee table photo book chronicling his journey. “With GoPro, you can get a shot mounted to your bumper,” he said. “I was able to get creative while riding. I rode almost 26,000 miles this year. Until my health says otherwise, I’m going to ride my motorcycle, listen to music, and take pictures of my motorcycle and my journey.”
Ron Vesely was born Sept. 19, 1955. He is an original Napervillian.
“As a kid my mom would go to thrift stores and buy one-dollar box cameras, Brownie cameras, Bellows cameras,” he recalled. “There might be pinhole leaks in the Bellows but I’d take pictures of trains. I rode with the steam excursions in the early 1960s where they ran them three times a year. We’d know they would be coming through Naperville on the Burlington tracks so we’d be there with an 8 mm movie camera or a Brownie camera. I started taking action pictures with trains in the third grade.”
Baseball was always a passion for Vesely. He still has the ticket stub from the first White Sox game he attended: Aug. 17, 1963 against the Yankees at Comiskey Park. That was the match that lit the fire within. “My dad bought me a Yankee photo pennant,” Vesely said. “Blasphemy. But who didn’t like Mickey Mantle? I was born on a White Sox block. Nellie Fox (White Sox second baseman) was a hero of ours. When he’d hit a home run twice a year we’d go ring doorbells.” Vesely collected game programs. Preserving the past was important. The White Sox still produce quarterly programs for their fans. Vesely has the program from the Aug. 17, 1963 contest. The White Sox won 2-0 behind a complete game from Gary Peters. “I remember looking at every picture in the program, just memorizing it,” Vesely said as if it was yesterday. “How cool was it that you’re the guy that created this memory that this kid is always going to have.”
During his high school years Vesely got a 35 mm Nikon F3. He took it to Comiskey and shoot from the stands. “I loved looking at Sports Illustrated and Sport magazine,” he said. “I’d analyze the picture and wonder what made it an editor’s choice. And then emulate it. Some photographers struck me as a kid.”
Vesely owns a first edition 1969 hockey book with Bobby Hull on the cover from photographer Ken Regan (1940-2012; Sports Illustrated; Bob Dylan’s “Rolling Thunder Review.”) Walter (Iooss, Sports Illustrated; Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali) ---everyone calls him Walter--How could I make my pictures this worthy?”
The White Sox hosted a 1979 photo contest where fans could walk on the field and take pictures of players. The grand prize was an Elgin men’s watch, a bug zapper, and a small Weber grill. Vesely made a picture of the White Sox first baseman Lamar Johnson. The 6’2” 225 pound African-American held a small white baby. Vesely won the contest. “I’m telling myself I got talent,” he said. “I start investing in gear. But it gets to the point where it’s getting expensive as a hobby. I had to make it a business or quit. I don’t back down from challenges and made it a business.”
Vesely never left the Chicago area to go to school. To support his photography he began working at the Amoco Refinery in Whiting, IN. before moving to Amoco Research in Naperville. Vesely specialized in auto lab research and became the go-to-guy on gasoline octane. “Again, never took a class in my life and I supervised a lab with six chemists,” he said. “I worked my way up to tech associate in 1989. At the same time I was getting my freelance career going. I had four weeks of vacation. Every day of vacation was a baseball or football assignment. In 1989 I shot the World Series for Sport magazine. I was in San Francisco.”
The 1989 World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics was disrupted by an earthquake that caused 63 deaths and nearly 3,800 injuries. Airports were down. The World Series was put on hold for ten days. Vesely was stuck in the Bay Area. He ran out of vacation time, but Amoco gave him comp time.
“I asked a good friend of mine, Rich Pilling, who was a photographer for MLB and Sporting News, when will you know it’s time (to go all in on sports photography)?,” Vesely recalled. “He said, ‘You’ll know.’ And when I was having to make comp time, it was now.” Vesely bought a townhouse in suburban Darien. The day he signed the closing papers he gave his two-week notice to Amoco. “I’ll never forget shooting a Notre Dame football game with (wide receiver) Rocket Ismail and manual focus lenses,” Vesely said. “He breaks free and I’m thinking, ‘Mortgage. Cash. Don’t mess this up.’ I get the film back and it was, ‘Whew.’ In the digital world you know the results right away.”
In March 1985 Vesely had been making photos on spec for Fleer baseball cards. He was returning from Spring Training in Florida and was at the baggage claim at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. “This gentleman walks up to me and says, ‘I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation about White Sox baseball and photography,” Vesely said. “I’d like to see your work.” The gentleman was Paul Jensen, public relations director for the White Sox. He lived in Naperville. Vesely visited Jensen with a binder of his slides. And Jensen said the White Sox could use Vesely
Vesely did not follow in the iconic footsteps of a George Brace photographer as Steve Green did at Wrigley Field. “There was no staff photographer,” Vesely said. “Tony Inzerillo did a lot of pre-game stuff and Bill Smith did a lot of the action stuff. Everybody was a contributor. I was a contributor. I became an all-round staff photographer but that wasn’t until the 1990s.”
Green and Vesely are friends. (For more on Steve Green visit his page on this website.) Vesely has fond memories of pranking Green during the National Anthem at Wrigley Field. “He was always Mr. Healthy,” Vesely said with a smile. “He would have a banana and granola in his photo bag. In the early 1990s one of the big things was having a portable alarm in your bag to protect from theft. I knew Steve liked to walk around with his bag so I set the alarm for the National Anthem at Wrigley. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please stand,’ silence and whoo whooo whoo. I love Steve. Outwardly he looked like he was never stressed. Inwardly, I know he was. He was great at not wearing it. I was the other way. I’d tell people before the assignment, ‘If I become an asshole it’s because I’m concentrating.’ Steve was never that asshole.”
Vesely was doing his early White Sox work by the “seat of his pants” and networked with Green. “He was one of the few that didn’t fault me for having a second job,” Vesely said. “There was a ton of, ‘You’re not a real photographer....’ That lasted until I became president of ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers, then located in Princeton, NJ.” ASMP is a trade association that advocates for photographer’s legal rights and provides business and technical support. Vesely was elected Midwest president in 1993-94.
Vesely was an independent contractor during his 37 years with the White Sox. He explained, “I still wanted to freelance, I didn’t have to come in nine to five in the off season. But the biggest thing was joint copyright. I said, ‘I know you can’t give me medical and dental so instead of that, how about letting me license my work as joint copyright?’ That was huge. It’s easier to expand your client as opposed to finding new clients.”
Vesely and his wife Tina have a daughter Laura. His family is aware of his archives and his generous donation to the Baseball Hall of Fame. In a June 2013 essay for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Jenny Ambrose, the Hall’s former photo archivist wrote, “Vesely has secured a place for himself among the elite ranks of professional photographers shooting Major League Baseball.” Vesely said, “There’s thousands of my slides in the hall that’s my collection. They won’t be sold on the internet. I donated them so they didn’t wind up in a landfill.”
The 1980s through the mid-1990s were the “golden era,” according to Vesely. He elaborated, “There were magazines, licensee’s, all kinds of stuff. I couldn’t work enough and you couldn’t have enough material.” Licensing demands decreased after the baseball strike of 1994-95 which wiped out the World Series for the first time since 1904. Consumers were upset with the game. Major League Baseball lost $580 million in ownership revenue and $230 million in player salaries. He said, “I thought it would be wise to drop off the licensing dependency.”
Apart from baseball, Vesely has made pictures for Proven4 sports drink, alumni magazine portraits for Washington University in St. Louis and images of his restored 1948 FL Hydra-Glide in the January 2022 issue of American Iron magazine. He sold the motorcycle in 2004. Vesely was also prescient on the physical demise of clients like Sport magazine, TV Guide, Inside Sports and the Sporting News. Inside Sports, for example, was based in Evanston and shut down in 1998. “I had already shifted my eggs in the White Sox basket,” he said. “I saw it coming. I saw it in my income. The web changed everything. Originally on the web we were getting space rates just like it was for print. There would be $125 minimum if Fox Sports wanted to run a little picture just like if it was a quarter page picture in a magazine.”
Vesely was as intense about keeping his eye on his work as he was on keeping an eye on his subject. He cited the talk show Roy Firestone’s SportsLook that ran on ESPN between 1980-90. “Instead of licensing a picture of Fernando Valenzuela from me, they would zoom in on one of my pictures in Sport magazine and take a picture of that picture,” Vesely said. “Every photo I’ve ever taken is like one of my children. I know it’s mine. So I alerted all my buddies. Every day at 3:30 in the afternoon we’d set our VCRs to record his show. We’d sit there and write, ‘At the four-minute point Fernando. At the eight-minute point Kent Hrbrek (Minnesota Twins) and down the road. And I sent ESPN an invoice for $200 per ten seconds. I spread the word. We were getting hosed. And they stopped doing that rather quickly.”
Like Paul Natkin, Vesely learned how to protect his work in lessons from Jim Marshall (1936-2010). The feisty Chicago-born Marshall was the lead photographer at Woodstock, he made pictures of the Beatles final concert in August 1966 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco as well as Johnny Cash, Miles Davis and Neil Young. “One dinner at his house taught me a lot about being a pit bull for your rights,” Vesely said. Another Chicago native, Mike Zagaris (born in Chicago in 1945) was an Oakland A’s photographer and rhythm and blues lensman who connected Vesely with Marshall. In September 1991 Vesely was shooting a 49ers football game in San Francisco. Zagaris asked if he would like to meet Marshall. Vesely met Marshall at a San Francisco restaurant and after dinner Marshall invited him back to his house. “He slams down a bottle of vodka and says, ‘Drink, or we ain’t looking at anything’,” Vesely recalled. “He also put a .44 magnum on the table. After a couple shots I asked if I could purchase some prints. I bought two die transfers, one of which was Jimi Hendrix (burning his guitar) at Monterey (International Pop Festival 1967). One of 50 of that shot. Jeff Beck. I’ve got all of Jim’s books. Ford used one of his photos for an ad. He got all over them. He said, ‘I don’t want money, I want a new car.’ And he got it. I’ve grown kind of tired of being a pit bull. Because the digital world has made it impossible.”
Vesely introduced the White Sox to the digital world. At the advent of digital in 1999, Vesely wrote a detailed proposal illustrating how the team could organize its history. Vesely used the word ‘history’ a lot when he talked about photography. “They would shoot whoever threw out the first pitch on film, get it back and never know who is what,” Vesely recalled. “Nobody got their pictures. Not only could I do it digitally, I would add the date and the logo. They would know who threw the first pitch and people could get their pictures. Stuff was all over the map. Including game action. They’d send out an original slide of (White Sox Hall of Famer) Frank Thomas and never get it back. I said I could organize it.
“The newest state of the art 35 mm digital camera gave you a file the size of a (small) flip phone. And that camera cost $12,000. But I said, ‘If you invest in this, I’ll get a return on your investment in two-and-a-half years.’ They said okay. We bought a Fuji photography printer. I did it all in house.” White Sox Vice President of Communications Scott Reifert approved the proposal and owner Jerry Reinsdorf hired Vesely in the role of “Official Team Photographer” in 1999. “I was in charge of everything,” he said. “I created a digital archive. PhotoShelter. A server base. (PhotoShelter is cloud-based.) I created a system where people can sit at their desk and say, ‘I need a picture of the Visa-Mastercard event or whatever,’ log in and there it is. I can be on my phone and say, ‘Do you need a picture of Magglio Ordonez in 2003?’ I can e-mail it to you.”
Vesely enjoyed taking portraits and embraced the difference between game action. Suddenly he was the creator. “You have the light,” he said. “You can manipulate light. It’s not a moment. You’re creating the moment. I wanted to do portraits more than anything. My first assignment to do a magazine portrait was for Inside Sports.” The outfielder Mike Greenwell was a 1986 Red Sox rookie. The magazine wanted a picture of Greenwell in the clubhouse with a veteran player mentoring him. The lighting wasn’t great. “All I had was a Vivitar 283 with an umbrella and a little flash on the camera,” Vesely recalled. “I had clubhouse access at Old Comiskey which was rare for photographers after 1986. There was the ‘Whitey Rule’ (informally named after St. Louis Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog) Somebody apparently posted a picture of a naked player in the Cardinals locker room and that was the end of photographers access. So I’m getting ready, talking to Greenwell in the locker room. It’s tight and suddenly (veteran teammate) Dwight Evans comes up and says, ‘Who are you? Get out of here. This is our house.’ I’m new so I’m packing up my stuff. Then (outfielder and future Cubs manager) Don Baylor comes up and says, ‘What do you need?’ I told him the story. He said to wait 45 minutes after the game and meet him at the door. Don came in, bless his soul, and was the most gracious guy. And I made my first portrait in a magazine.”
The White Sox 1994 spring training was unprecedented because NBA legend Michael Jordan was in camp. It was a media circus. Vesely did some research with basketball photographers. “They said he’s going to ask you if you’re a professional photographer,” Vesely recalled. “You’re going to say ‘Yes’ and he’s going to say, ‘Well, all you need is one picture.’ On photo day when he was coming through the line and sure enough, he asked, ‘Are you a professional photographer?’ And I said yes.” Jordan told Vesely he would only need one picture. “I said, ‘Wait a minute, aren’t you a rookie and shouldn’t I be asking you the questions?’ For that one little moment I caught Michael off guard. All he could do was laugh.”
These days, even more so than when Jordan played, everyone is a journalist and everyone is a photographer. There’s cable stations, podcasts, a few magazines and obscure websites. Athletes are flooded by media. “Now, I’m not going to say ‘all,’ but for ‘most’ guys it is all about money,” Vesely explained. “I used to be able to get guys to do stuff for fun. For instance, with Ozzie Guillen, when he was a rookie I mentioned Chico Carrasquel.”
Alfonso “Chico” Carrasquel (1926-2005) was a Hall of Fame Venezuelan shortstop for the White Sox and an idol of Guillen, also from Venezuela. Vesely asked if Guillen would wander near second base and imitate one of Carrasquel’s animated poses. “So on a Sunday morning the last game of the season he put on his full uniform, we went out to second base and he’s doing all this stuff,” Vesely said. “Just for the love of the game.”
Vesely has had several favorite baseball subjects. He said former White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle is down-to-earth. “He’s the guy you want as a neighbor who happened to be a great pitcher,” Vesely said. “He knew how to have fun and was never into himself at all. (Former White Sox Cuban first baseman) Jose’ Abreu, just kindhearted. Comes across as gruff. I’d pop my head over the shutter, grin and go, ‘Really?’ He’d crack up and go, ‘Thank you.’ Ron Kittle. Back in the old days the dugout was next to the photo box. When he was with the Yankees and not playing we’d sit there and talk. Every year at the end of the season Paul Konerko would come in and want to look at his pictures. I had Paul on the digital archive and let him scroll through. He picked some and gave him the prints. Paul appreciated good work from photographers. I did it as a team courtesy for most guys.”
But when White Sox-Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Alex Rios retired in 2015 he contacted Vesely. Rios spent four years of his 12-year major league career with the White Sox. “He’s the only guy to pay me up front to collect his archive,” Vesely said. “I put together a gallery of 400 pictures and he paid me for my time.”
There is always a difference between old and new. Vesely found dramatic changes between making pictures at Comiskey Park, and Guaranteed Rate Field--the ballpark name as of this writing. “As far as the pictures you could make, nothing could beat Old Comiskey,” Vesely said. “Home plate was in the southwest corner. Shadows, back light you had cool sight light. The new ball park was harsh flood light. The backgrounds: Old Comiskey you had the upper deck with the arches. There’s pictures of Babe Ruth with those arches. That’s history. I shot pictures from the picnic area looking out. (White Sox catcher-occasional outfielder) Carlton Fisk talking to fans between the (picnic area) fence. That’s never going to happen again. They’ve got all the protective netting up. The new ballpark had zero ambiance. However, the plus was that the offices were air-conditioned, the facilities were great. From a working standpoint, the new ballpark was fabulous. One of the greatest ballparks to photograph just had its last game---The Oakland Coliseum. I made beautiful pictures there. Oakland’s shooting positions and field layout were unique to any in the major leagues. The photo positions on the home plate side of the A’s third base dugout allowed me to try and capture a pitch entering the catcher’s mitt unobstructed by the batter with a clean background.
“I’ve always believed it’s not the tools but the eye.”
And now Vesely will refocus his eyes on a new path. “I didn’t have a summer for 37, 38 years,” he said. “No regrets. This country is great. I want to visit National Parks. I’m not playing music anymore but I still have all my basses. I don’t miss the ballpark.” Just like the road, the game will go on forever. But the passionate work of Ron Vesely has preserved American history
.---Dave Hoekstra
