Interesting about Monroe. So I guess he wasn't a Sharman Society candidate, after all? Hmm.
Moving on, we come to someone who's an example of what Stephen Sondheim was talking about when he wrote "When you're a Met, you're a Met all the way" for
West Side Story.
Sure, Miller's days at Shea had ended in 1966 and he'd spent the next two years pitching for the Giants' AAA team in Phoenix, but when the Orioles took Larry in the 1968 Rule V draft and had him in their 1969 training camp and Topps decided he was worth a 1969 card (#323), they used a BHNH picture of him in his old Mets uniform, from back in 1966.
Which is a little weird (even granting the awesomeness of the Mets, particularly in that year)…since it turns out that Topps actually photographed Larry in his Orioles uniform that spring.
Okay, still BHNH, but the O's did in fact give Larry a hat. I've got the proof:
So the Topps guy could have had him put it on. And even the proper uniform BHNH is better than the one that's three years old. And with #323 being in Series 3 (I think), you'd think there would be time to send the spring picture back to New York.
Or did the photog simply forget to tell the home office whom he'd shot pictures of, and they just went with the file photo? Seems surprising to me, although
Merkle doubtless knows way more about this stuff than I do.
(As it turned out, Topps needn't have bothered with the card; the Orioles returned Larry to Phoenix and he hung his glove after the season.)