The image in Ray Gora's photograph is indelible. It's Game 2 of the 1959 World Series, and White Sox left fielder Al Smith backs up to chase a Los Angeles Dodger home run. As his back hits the brick wall of Comiskey Park, a fan in a suit reaches innocently for the ball as his beer topples over and splashes all over Smith's head.

"We were all jealous of it," said Steve Lasker, then with the Chicago American, who was one of a handful of photographers lined up that day with their 120-pound "Big Bertha" cameras in the upper-deck photographers "basket" behind home plate.

"It's a sixth sense that you get when you're watching a play," Lasker said. "You only have a fraction of a second and back in those days you had sheet film so you only had one chance. You have to have a sixth sense. I think he had a seventh."

John Raymond Gora, 91, an award-winning Chicago Tribune photographer known as "Ray" to friends and colleagues, died Tuesday, Oct. 7, of complications from a stroke in a nursing home in Danville.

Born and raised in Joliet, Mr. Gora joined the Herald-News there in 1927 as a copy boy, and later became a sports writer and photographer. He joined the Chicago Tribune as a photographer in 1942 and worked at the paper until he retired in 1977--with the exception of three years in the Navy during World War II.

From 1950 on, he focused on sports, where he did most of his distinguished work, racking up accolades from the Illinois Associated Press, the Chicago Press Photographers Association and others.

The photo of Al Smith won him the Tribune's Edward Scott Beck Award in 1959, its top internal prize. This August, it was named one of the world's 50 greatest sports photographs in The Observer Sport Monthly. "That was his very favorite," said his daughter, Mary Lou Craig.

Another dramatic shot from 1956 shows a close-up of boxer Carmen Basilio in his spartan dressing room after losing his world welterweight championship to Johnny Saxton. With a towel draped across his legs and his hair drenched in sweat, Basilio stares at his hands through cut and swollen eyes.

"He just had a great eye and timing to get the images like that," said Frank Hanes, a current Tribune photo editor, who got tips from Mr. Gora when he first started at the paper in the 1970s.

He took his camera everywhere he went even until the last years of his life, said Craig. "He loved photography," she said. "That was his life."

A nearly lifelong resident of Joliet, Mr. Gora was a member of the Joliet Knights of Columbus, the American Legion, Rivals Club and the Old Timers Baseball Association. After a stroke about a year ago, he moved to Danville to be closer to his daughter.

Other survivors include another daughter, Elaine Herff; a son, Robert; 11 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. His wife of almost 60 years, Emily, died in 1996.

Mass will be said at 10 a.m. Saturday in Sts. Cyril & Methodius Catholic Church in Joliet.

J R Gora