Gambo and T_Wil1 Photopack

[FatJack]

Here's to the real life Crash Davis

[Merkle923]

You do realize he was a lefthanded batter, right? And his uniform number was 28? So that you're looking at a simple flipped negative?

[Merkle923]

By the way, the suggestion that this was taken in Spring Training? That dusty field where Milner wore a number "in the 80s"? It's Shea Stadium. Milner is framed between the left field stands and the scoreboard in right.

By the way, as the much older McCarthy image shows, Milner's spring training number was 49.

[rico43]

Beat me to it

[FatJack]

Originally Posted by Merkle923

You do realize he was a lefthanded batter, right? And his uniform number was 28? So that you're looking at a simple flipped negative?

I do realize he was a left-handed batter (though, to be honest, I have never been very good at distinguishing right from left; even at my advanced age, I have to stop and think about which hand I write with to determine which is which. Dyslexia runs in our family, too, fwiw.). And I did know that his major league number was 28. And I did think he appeared a little older than his early ST days. But... I'd been up for 15 minutes when I saw the image and all I could think was "that's an "8". And, honestly, I don't remember the Mets handing out numbers that high in the 60s and 70s--even in ST. So I just thought it was pretty cool. Reversed negative did not occur to me, since the script isn't visible and the cap looks the same. And I know its a big deal to some, but I rarely waste a thought on what stadium or field someone is in. It's just one of those things that doesn't matter much to me. So.....never mind.

[KenRaffensberger16]

Former minor league home run king, Buzz Arlett
who hit 450 pro ball home runs - 432 minor league
home runs (1918-1930; 1932-1937) and he played
one season with the Phillies (1931), where he hit
18 more.
(photo source: baseball-fever.com and SABR.org.

[SDL]

Originally Posted by KenRaffensberger16

Can members post photos of Mike Hessman, the new career minor league home runs champ (433 home runs) and post photos of the man whose record he broke Buzz Arlett (432 HRs). Hessman's record-breaking HR came yesterday for Detroit Tigers' AAA affiliate, Toledo..
Hessman has played five partial seasons in the majors (2003-2004 Atlanta; 2007-2008 Detroit; 2010 NY Mets. where hit hit .188 with 14 home runs. He spent all or part of 19 of the last 20 seasons in the Minor leagues: 1996-2010 & 2012-2015; with 2011 in the Japanese Lgs.
Hessman is 37 and has been in pro ball since he was 18 and plays 1B, 3B and OF..


Arlett was a 1B/OF and played in the minors 17 years, 1918-1925; 1928-1930; & 1932-1937.(Apparently he was out of pro ball in 1926 & 1927). He played one full season in the majors with the 1931 Phillies where he hit well (131 hits in 121 games, with 18 HR, 72 RBI, and a .313 batting average. I'm guessing he was an atrocious fielder if he could hit like that, but couldn't stay in the big leagues.

Hessman playing for Team USA in the 2008 Olympics

[brobby05]

Thanks a million for the Roger Miller and especially the 71 & 72 Don Minchers. Where in the WORLD did you get those???!! I never had seen a non-mustached 72 Mincher. Refresh my memory, wasn't Mincher clean shaved during the 72 WS?

Thanks a million!

BRobby05

[DeweyintheHall]

I do believe the latest TV release has given us a rare gem - Dick Mills...he of the 2g, 3.2ip 1970 career with the Red Sox:

[Merkle923]

Back to that postcard book of the 1909 Senators produced by the Barr-Farnham company, and outfielder Otis Clymer.

If he could've played for a new team every season, Clymer might have been a Hall of Famer. He came up with the Pirates in 1905 and hit .332 in 96 games, went to the Senators in 1907 and batted .316, and joined the Braves in 1913 and hit .324 in just eleven appearances. For the rest of his career he was pretty much underwater, even for the batting-poor early years of the 20th Century.

[Merkle923]

186 career games, only one season as a starter, a series of colorful nicknames including "Muskrat Bill," a family name mercifully shortened (he was born either Shipkenhauer or Shipkrethaver) - and yet Bill Shipke left behind at least two prominent cards (he's in the T206 set and also the gold-leafed Ramly series).

Shipke produced a 1.8 WAR as the Senators' third baseman in 1908, his only shot as a major league regular. Baseball-Reference's biography of him cryptically notes: "An old Senators fan convinced Bill to paste a piece of paper with 'magical properties' to his bat and Shipke had a great month after starting the experiment."

Whatever it was, it didn't last, and by May 14 of the 1909 season, he was out of the majors for good.

[Merkle923]

Tannehill was a former star pushing 35 and just hanging on when the Barr-Farnham photographer captured him just before the Senators sold him to Minneapolis early in the 1909 season.

Had the stats been compiled during his career, Tannehill would've twice been the National League leader in Fielding Independent Pitching, and once its ERA champion. It wasn't as if he was under appreciated by the measures of the day: a 20-game winner in four out of five seasons with the Pirates and twice more with the Boston Americans, a .627 lifetime winning percentage, and just three wins shy of 200 for his career.

Tannehill was also a career .255 batter with 142 RBI in just 507 career games.

[DeweyintheHall]

There seems to be a lack of good images out there of Paul Mitchell with the Mariners. His '78 Topps card is a paint-job and his '79 is just not very attractive. Other than those, these recent TV releases are the only color photos I've been able to find of him with the Ms:

[DeweyintheHall]

I have been trying for some time to locate the correct pronunciation of short-time Cub and Philly Manny Seoane...can someone assist? Is it Sane, Sone, Seen, Say-o-ah-nay...?

[KenRaffensberger16]

Originally Posted by DeweyintheHall

I have been trying for some time to locate the correct pronunciation of short-time Cub and Philly Manny Seoane...can someone assist? Is it Sane, Sone, Seen, Say-o-ah-nay...?

(Speaking As a lifetime Phillies fan) I think I remember Kalas, Ashburn and the other Phillies broadcasters calling him "Say-Own-Nay".

[Merkle923]

This player's story (innovator, early Canadian import, 13-year veteran, led a double life of bigamy, apparently jumped to his death from a boat headed from New York to Boston) and his card (1887 Kalamazoo Bats Cigarettes, as impressive a set as was made before 1900) are both worthy of presentation here.

But this is really just an excuse to link to Baseball Hall of Fame Researcher Tom Shieber's startling blog which narrows down to a span of 48 hours - nearly 118 years ago - when this photograph was taken. In the process, Shieber proves that the image on this and maybe other Kalamazoo Bats cards was altered as surely as Topps airbrushed its pictures in the '70s and everybody photoshops theirs today.

If you like baseball photographs (I'm guessing this is the subject we are unanimous on) you will love Shieber's detective work.

He also inadvertently gives several clues as to why the year(s) of issue for this series has been so fluid. Between Shieber pinpointing the fact that one of the more common of the Kalamazoo cards issued in 1887 wasn't even photographed until August 22 or 23 of that year, and the recent discovery of an ad in a York, Pennsylvania newspaper for the cards in November of that year, we can now guess these were issued at the end of the 1886 and 1887 seasons, and in the off-seasons, and maybe during the year!

Here's the link to the extraordinary (and creatively presented) blog:

Baseball Researcher: Arthur Irwin and Kalamazoo Bats

The sliding player is Al Maul (debut 1884) who despite doubling as a pitcher and an outfielder appeared in only 410 games over 15 seasons with eight different teams!

[Merkle923]

Since we're on the same page in the album (and Shieber references him in his post) here are a couple of more images representative of some of the different styles of images used in the Kalamazoo Bats set.

This is the card of Thomas "Dude" Esterbrook, a popular if not terrifically successful third baseman of the 1880's. Esterbrook got three hits in the first World Series in 1884 and had a total of five different stints with three different New York teams, and then met an end even more disturbing than the aforementioned Irwin, so we'll skip that.

As to the card, he's in a New York Giants 1886 uniform and when it turns up it usually is found with one or more 1886 Giants cards, but he's listed with the team he played for in 1887 - the New York Mets. The idea that these were late-season/off-season cards explains that logical disconnection, since the Giants apparently sold Esterbrook back to the Mets around October 20, 1886.

[Merkle923]

Here is one more photo style from Kalamazoo Bats (which depicted the Mets and Giants players exclusively in studio portraits, the Phillies at the then-brand-new Baker Bowl, and the Athletics in full-body images at a photo studio somewhere).

Stovey (his two cards in the set both identify him by his family name, Stowe) is one of the forgotten stars of the 19th Century. Five times a home run champ and twice the leader in stolen bases, with an OPS+ of 144 and a career 45.1 WAR total in just fourteen seasons, he's been largely dismissed because while he starred in the American Association and the Players' League, he was pretty ordinary in the National League (though perhaps his best overall season saw him lead the NL in triples, homers, slugging percentage - to go with 57 stolen bases - in 1891).

[Merkle923]

By the way, speaking of hard to find pitchers named Mitchell, here's Charlie, whose dozen relief appearances with the Red Sox in 1984-85 constituted his entire career. His brother John (1986-89 Mets, 1990 O's) is also in the Topps Vault upload.

[cheech411]

angels 1982-84