Monroe Tobacco Cards: Webb, Emig, and Johnson
All of the images were traced from T206 cards using Inkscape and then texture was added using GIMP. The GMs in the league were offered the opportunity to sign the card for their team as the relevant player. So, that’s the source of the signatures on the cards below.
An unlikely baseball hero. After a career spent in obscure cornfields, freezing diamonds in the northern Midwest, and blazing baseball fields in the humid South, the soft-tossing righty debuted in the LBL as a 41 year old rookie and immediately finished third in Pitcher of the Year voting. A cerebral pitcher, reliant on guile rather than physical prowess, Pappy Webb immediately endeared himself to the Brooklyn rooters. An integral part of the Whales’ threepeat championship run from 1900-1902, Webb’s
postseason heroics are already the stuff of legends. Down 3-2 to the dominant Twin City Empire in the 1901 Legacy Cup in a best of nine series, Webb stood his ground against legendary Empire starting pitcher Jim Nemmers and breathed new life into the somehow underdog defending champions. The Whales would go on to win the 1901 Legacy Cup in Minnesota in eight games. A revered baseball mind, Webb currently serves as the bench coach of the Detroit Giants.
The original ace for the Windy City Birds—Chicago’s more successful baseball franchise—since their days as an exhibition squad, Emig is the all-time leader for the Doves in WAR. Now retired, Emig’s smooth, effortless delivery was emblematic of the Doves’ striving to capture the most beautiful version of America’s great game. To any unbiased observer, Emig’s natural arm talent was easily among the best in the game throughout his tenure. But, Emig did not always put in the work to excel beyond his own physical limits. Nevertheless, Emig was a durable pitcher and a hard thrower; he led the LBL in both innings pitched and strikeouts in each of 1897 and 1898. He also led the LBL in WAR in 1897 but was not honored with the Pitcher of the Year award, losing out to Cleveland’s always great Matthew Holiday. Emig was above average in each of the first eight years of his nine-year career—only failing to post an ERA+ above 100 in his age 40 season—and had a stellar postseason in 1900 when the Doves won the Western League pennant. Emig’s casual, easy dominance was a strong foundation for the early Doves’ teams. Whether he ever captured the most of his enormous natural arm talent is a question that Doves fans will be left debating for a long time.
Johnson, no matter how bad the Packers were—and there have been many bad Packers’ seasons—has always been among the best hitters in the LBL. Johnson is second all-time on the LBL leaderboard for OBP and third all-time for OPS. As good as he is at hitting, he is equally hopeless with the glove. Likely miscast as an outfielder for much of his career, it is difficult to say if it was a lack of interest in fielding or some unresolved deficiency in technical ability that so limited him with the glove. But, none of the Packers’ faithful came to Powers Field to watch him field. They came to watch the lefty twist opposing pitchers into knots—like a cat toying with a mouse before delivering the killing blow. The two-time Golden Bat award winner has willed the Packers’ offense to something resembling competence—despite a limited supporting cast—nearly singlehandedly for most of his career. And, while he will likely never earn a Legacy Cup during his playing career, he has deservedly earned the respect of fans of baseball and his peers alike.