Old Judge Variation Question

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Posted By: ramram

This came up in another thread and got buried in the other thread but seemed interesting enough to start anew just to get some opinions. Jay isn's sure but he's digging into it and may figure it out but I wanted to see what others may know or have an opinion about it:

I sold the Old Judge card shown below some time ago and I always wondered about what I perceived as unusual about it. The card is of T.C. Nicholson of the St. Louis Whites. The line that contains his name has written: "B.8 T.C. Nicholson, 2nd B". I assumed the "B.8" referred to 8th in the batting order even though that would be odd since players, although rarely back then, would change batting order once in a while. So why put that on there?

Have you seen this before? What else might it mean?

Rob M.



Following is Jay's response:

That type of notation appears on many St Louis White cards with each player having a different number:

Staley: B.5.
Cantz: B.6.
Nyce: B.7.
Nicholson: B.8.
Alcott: B.9.
Burch: B.10.

Kenyon: B.12.
Hines: B.13.
Sproat: B.14.
Loftus: B.15.

That makes it seem like 5 players are missing. There are four White's players: Beckley, Crooks, Herr and McCormack who are not known to have this type of notation on their cards. I did this quickly so I may have missed one. The bottom line is it seems to be some type of numbering system for White's players which somehow got included on the name line on some of the player's cards. Note--player's with this type of notation also have cards without the notation.