1908 California League Schedule and 1907 Players

[bocca001]

I just picked up this cool schedule for the 1908 California League, put out by a cigar shop in Stockton. It pictures the 1907 Stockton league champions and provides complete pitching and batting statistics for every player in the league.

Many of these players have baseball cards, from major and/or minor league issues. I thought it would be interesting to see who you might be able to identify and what cards/photos/anything else (e.g., interesting tidbits) you might be able to post/share. I know the scans are a bit fuzzy. Sorry about that. Something about the upload. I can e-mail better scans to anyone who might be interested.

[bocca001]

Here are a few:

Hal Chase, who had the highest batting average in the league after heading home from New York. An E106 card and an image of him on the San Jose team (not my photo). Chase batted .390 in limited games.

And HOFer Harry Hooper, who played half of the season for Sacramento after graduating from St. Mary's college. Hoper batted .301

[bocca001]

Right below Hooper in the stats is Charles Graham (BA .301), the player/owner of the Sacramento team who sold Hooper to the Red Sox. Graham played a few games for Boston in 1906 and then returned to the West Coast. He is perhaps best known as a manager, part owner, and president of the SF Seals (from 1918 until his death in 1948). One of his partners in buying the Seals (Doc Strub) was also a player for Sacramento during the 1907 California League season and is listed in the stats (BA .250).

Pictured are Graham's 1909 Obak card, a posthumous 1949 Menko Card (his name is on the back in Japanese), and Seals programs from two different Charles Graham days.

[Leon]

Great stuff. Thanks for sharing.

.

[edjs]

Cool, Marc. Could you e-mail me better scans, please? skeltone@rocketmail.com

Thanks,
Ed

[bocca001]

Great stuff. Thanks for sharing.

.

Leon- I'm pretty sure that you have a D311 Arellanes card you can share here.

[bocca001]

Sticking with the Red Sox theme, Duffy Lewis is listed here as well. He hit all of .170 for the Alameda team in the California League that year (according to this document). Here are some pics of later Obak and T207 cards.

[Kawika]

Spiderman

[bocca001]

Nice Zeenut, David. Baum, who won many games in the PCL, was 7-4 in the CA league in 1907. Not much work compared to Frank Arellanes, who was 31-21 for San Jose. He would go on to pitch for Boston in the AL from 1908-1910, winning 16 games in 1909 and earning a spot in several of the circa 1910 baseball card issues. He then returned to the PCL and has a number of Zeenut, Pacific Coast Biscuit, Obak, and other related PCL cards. I'll add some of those later. He died of the Spanish flu in 1918.

[bocca001]

A few more of note in here.

You'd think that San Jose would have won the league with future major leaguer Arellanes as the primary pitcher and Harry Krause, another future major leaguer, as the secondary pitcher. Krause was 7 and 11 for San Jose in 1907, but would go on to pitch well for the Philadelphia Athletics, including an 18-8 year with a 1.39 ERA in 1909. He ended up back in the PCL-R a few years later and has a good number of Major league and minor league cards.