[Merkle923]

Anybody who spends any time collecting or just enjoying baseball photography of the last 50 years (or longer) knows about the list of "you'll never find them in color" guys. They're not just the ones there the briefest, sometimes they're just guys who repeatedly fall through the cracks - like Al Schmelz of the 1967 Mets.

With them virtually all of September, pitched two innings on the 7th and one more on the 24th, both appearances at Shea Stadium - and everybody missed him. Topps got other Mets' September call-ups like Joe Grzenda and Joe Moock, but not Schmelz. He evidently just missed the last road trip to Chicago (ending September 3) so George Brace didn't get him. Topps did the Mets in spring training in 1967 (it's where they got Tom Seaver, who by the way pranked them and pretended to be left-handed) yet didn't take any shots of him. Topps didn't do them in spring training in 1968 (the fledgling MLBPA held out on them, successfully forcing a union-wide contract) - so they missed him.

Sure he's in the Mets' spring training team pictures of 1967 and 1968 but you'd need a Stanford super-computer to make either of those images look at all good.

So tonight I'm wasting some time labeling a bunch of 1968 "TV Slides" baseball distributed to the media in an early innovative publicity outreach and I see one of a group shot of Mets that I somehow overlooked when I bought the collection.

It's a casual shot of a remarkable group: ten members of the '68 Mets pitching staff. The faces of three of them are blocked or cut off, and six of them are pretty obvious. In the foreground is Alvin Jackson, back from two years in St. Louis. Sprawled on the grass at the right is Dick Selma, a year away from being the delight of the Bleacher Creatures at Wrigley Field. Back of Selma is "kewpie-doll-faced" Bill Short. To the left of Short, his number 36 visible, is Jerry Koosman, and to his left, staring straight at th camera, are the late Danny Frisella, and Tom Seaver.

And who's the guy on the far left? The big fair-haired guy with the tan? You can't see his number. If he's wearing a glove it's not on his right hand. So he's probably a righty, yet clearly not Don Cardwell, John Glass, Cal Koonce, Hal Reniff, Steve Renko, Nolan Ryan, or Ron Taylor - seven of the other eight righties in camp that year. Even if he is a LHP, the only possibilities are Bob Hendley, Tug McGraw, Ron Paul, Les Rohr, and Don Shaw - and I don't think he's any of them.

I think he's the only other pitcher in the 1968 Mets' camp I haven't yet mentioned. I think the guy on the far left…is Al Schmelz.