Quote:
Originally Posted by Rainmaker
As someone who attended spring training during the players' strike of 1995, I've wondered if the hearsay about the replacement players is true.
That is: major league baseball and the photographers who normally shot players for the card companies did not, either under orders or unilaterally, not shoot photos of the replacement players. I have seen a photo or two of players who were in the replacement camps, but not any source.
Since Topps dealt with the players' union, I felt sure they kept hands off, but I was curious about anyone shooting photos for posterity.
Does anyone have any specific information about those players in spring training that year?
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Topps or any other card company would have been in violation of their contract with the Players Association to shoot replacement players.
If you go to Getty and search for 1995 baseball
replacement players, a small handful of images comes up. This suggests that their
could be more in the portfolios of Sports Illustrated or assorted local newspapers, but it also looks like they were careful not to overdo it. They are mostly group shots, shots of minor leaguers (not yet in the union), and shots of managers and coaches. And, really, outside of doing a perfunctory piece on the state of the game at the outset of spring training, what kind of "posterity" would you be looking to record? It was really one of the darkest chapters in the history of the game. Everybody just wanted it to be over and forgotten.
FWIW, among the Getty shots is a pitcher identified as "Steve Sharto". No person with that name appears in Baseball-Register. But then who is to say they got the ID right? 48 year old Pedro Borbon is there as is a Detroit pitcher William Kostich who played in the minors in '93 and '95, but not in '94.
EDIT: Ah. Just found a minor league card of Steve SHARTS, tagged as a replacement player, whose pro career ended in 1990. Well, that mystery is solved at least.