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Old 08-28-2014, 10:14 PM   #22153
Merkle923
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Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 2,177
Jeff:

Judging from the Topps cards of that era and the stuff I saw in the archives, it looks like two things happened.

Topps had a staff photographer based in New York, and another one from Dallas who worked mostly Arizona spring training and a couple of west coast trips each year. Nobody from Chicago until maybe 1975. So, any in-season shooting of the White Sox in 1969-70 would've been on the road.

I don't see any spring training photography at all for the White Sox that would date to 1969. That was a dicey spring for Topps. Some time late in 1967, the brand new players' union asked players to stop posing for new photos until Topps would agree to a union-wide contract and more money (previously they had signed players one at a time, for $1 apiece, and paid them $125 if their photo was used). The deal resolving this wasn't struck until some time in Spring Training 1969 and it's very likely that some teams weren't photographed that spring.

If you look at the '69 Topps White Sox cards, they're almost all in the road unis, or in the old navy blue uniforms in photos that dated back as far as 1966, or in capless photos from other teams. The photo of Don Secrist on the White Sox rookie card was actually taken while he was with Indianapolis the year before, and Bill Melton's rookie card actually depicts him as a member of the 1968 Syracuse Chiefs.

As to 1970, Topps clearly did shoot at White Sox camp - there's a rookie card in a late series featuring Mickey Scott, who only joined the Sox that year. With him are Danny Lazar and Bart Johnson, and the photos were clearly all taken as part of the same shoot. And they're all wearing road uniforms. It was not uncommon in those days for teams to wear road uniforms at home in spring training.

There's also a 1971 Rich McKinney in the home powder blues that must've been taken in Sarasota in the spring of 1970 (the card was in a series that was on the shelves before Spring Training 1971 even began), so there might be a few more powder blues out there - but it wouldn't seem that there would be many.

Other than those 1967 Kansas City "white cap" Diego Segui images I posted the other day, I do not recall seeing any Topps Vault image that was from a shoot where at least one picture wasn't used on a card somewhere - so the likelihood of there being some collection of unused White Sox home blues from 1969-70 is microscopic.

Hope that explains it.

So. Little evidence
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