Posted By:
Dave HornishActually, I am not stating or commenting on the order of printing. I'm just counting dots.....
The dots are definitely on the card Ted posted but what they mean is an open question. They could possibly even be remnants of a "D" from his Detroit days (last year in Motown was 1903. He went to NY mideason 1903). I wonder when the photo the portrait is taken from was made? If you look at the Dahlen photo which his T206 portrait is based upon , the studio used little whited out circles on his photo to obscure the team name on the uniform, presumably after he was traded . I wonder if those are what we are seeing. Weren't a lot of the T206 photos taken in 1903/04? I lost my Dahlen photo scan in my hard drive crash but the photo studio had a way to obscure the uniform lettering that was very obvious.
While this debate goes on, The Tabasco Kid was a tough guy and had one of the greatest baseball nicknames of all time.
From Baseballlibrary.com:
"The 5'5" Elberfeld played a fiery brand of baseball, challenging baserunners to slash him out of their way, living up to the title "The Tabasco Kid." His legs were badly scarred, and he grimly poured raw whiskey into spike wounds to cauterize them. He hit .310 as Detroit's shortstop his first full season, 1901, and was the Highlanders' everyday shortstop from mid-1903 through 1907. After a short, unsuccessful stint as New York's manager for part of 1908, he went back to playing full time the following year. He remained in baseball for decades, battling umpires and foes as a hotheaded minor league manager."