While I was back on page 1108 for the Thomson link, above, I caught a glimpse of a post by
okcochise, asking why TV has so few shots of the 1969-1970 White Sox home uniforms.
Merkle answered, with this being an excerpt thereof:
Quote:
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 [uniforms] 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 [home shots] out there - but it wouldn't seem that there would be many.
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Topps did capture a few shots of the white/blue trim home unis of this period, although the (IMO) awesome road style (powder blue with "Chicago" in white script, outlined in deeper blue on the powder and then "White Sox" in the deep blue on the tail of the "Chicago") was far more prevalent.
For example, here's Tom McCraw, likely from 1971. (BM 388 and 389)
I don't see the 1969 Centennial patch (the Sox wore it on the left sleeve, at least on the road uniforms), so it's more likely a 1970 uniform, and with the "last year's laundry in the spring" tradition, that makes this 1971. Tom was a Senator that year, but he wasn't traded until the end of camp (March 29), so there was plenty of time for Topps to shoot him.
I also have a few 1971 spring shots from other sources:
Bill Melton
Carlos May
And it appears that Topps might have had a stringer wandering around Sarasota in the spring of 1969, after all, as this shot of Joel Horlen (pp294) catches him in the 1968 kit (note the Illinois sesquicentennial patch on the sleeve). Which makes it OT for the discussion of the pinstripe-free Don Gutteridge-era uniforms, but it's still interesting to see a shot from that era, for reasons discussed above.
