Opening Day of the 2013 Major League Baseball season is just a few weeks away, so I’ll depart from my usual fare and try to bust out some hardball pics between now and then (as I did last year with this gallery of baseball clubs from the late 19th to early 20th centuries). Here’s a neat one via the old Acme Newsphotos company. It shows members of the 1934 Pittsburgh Pirates squad lighting a fire with their baseball bats. The original caption was “Heavy Hitters of the Pirates.”

1934 Pittsburgh Pirates at Spring Training in Paso Robles, California.

From left to right are Charles “Red” Lucas, Gus Suhr, Larry French, Harold “Pie” Traynor, Freddie Lindstrom, Paul Waner, and Lloyd Waner. Despite a lineup featuring six future Hall of Famers (all of whom but Burleigh Grimes are shown here) the ’34 Pirates finished two games under .500, good for 5th place in the National League.