[Merkle923]

To my knowledge, Bobby Tiefenauer has never showed up in a color image in the uniform of the New York Yankees. There's ample explanation for that.

Tiefenauer pitched for seven teams (one of them, the Cardinals, twice) over a 10-year career that spanned just 179 games. He was a knuckleball pitcher, brilliant in AAA and maddeningly erratic in the majors. 9-25 with 23 saves lifetime makes the length of his career seem improbable. But in '64 he had 13 of those saves, a 3.21 ERA, and 46 strikeouts and just 15 walks in 73 innings for the Braves.

The next spring he gave up eight hits and six earned runs in seven innings with Milwaukee, and was dished off to the Yankees on June 16th. He got saves in two of his first five appearances in New York. In his next five appearances he faced a total of 53 batters. 14 got hits, two were walked, one was hit, and he was tagged for five runs in 12-and-two-thirds.

The Yankees sent him to their AAA team in Toledo on July 7. He would bubble back up with the Indians in August.

So "Tief" was only in New York for about three weeks, and only the first 11 of those days were at home. It's no surprise there's no color shot of him.

Except there is.

You may have heard that Getty Images just "unlocked" thousands of its photos to stop fighting much internet use, so I've been combing the files pretty heavily. I just put "1957 Baseball" in the search engine and what popped up made my jaw drop. It's mislabeled as a photograph of the late great Jerry Coleman being interviewed before a game.

In fact, it's Coleman doing the interview - of Bobby Tiefenauer and catcher Elston Howard. And the watermark is over Howard. Just like that: a color photo of Bobby Tiefenauer with the Yankees. Not terrific, not big, but wonderful in its own right, and isolated below.