Is this really Fred Thayer, inventor of the catcher's mask?
 

I hate to out an auction, but I don't feel I have any choice. It's in a major auction and I'm pretty confident all interested people have already seen it. The item is described as a cabinet card of Fred Thayer, the inventor of the catcher's mask. I've shown a picture of it below. Also, shown below is a picture of Thayer's Harvard team from the internet. According to numerous websites, Thayer is seated in the middle row, second from the right, holding a catcher's mask. But this guy looks nothing like the guy in the auctioned cabinet card. He has a mustache and is bald, while the guy in the cabinet card has no mustache and a full head of hair. Also, the guy NEXT TO Thayer in the internet photo, on his right, looks identical to the guy in the cabinet card. So, has the auction house gotten it wrong? Does the cabinet card show Thayer or not? Thanks.

I believe that is Jim Tyng. I think the fellow to Tyng's right(our left) is Thayer.

Thank you.

Here is a scan from The H Book of Harvard Athletics confirming Tyng is the one with the mustache (he is the one who actually used the mask that Thayer designed).

And here is 1878 also with Tyng having a mustache and holding mask.

Wow very interesting.
Great research
Just curious what is the expected or hoped next steps?

Is it just me, or does the cabinet photo look more like Wright from the Harvard team photos?

To show you how bad I am at photo recognition, if someone said this player was on the Harvard team and didn't tell me who it was, I would have picked Wright. For what it's worth, the cabinet in the auction does have F. W. Thayer written in what appears to be period pencil on the back (which, of course, could be wrong...but at least someone else also thought it was Thayer).

Hmmm...I guess I am not the only one.

No you're not. And that goes for all the Harvard photos. Even the build looks like Wright.

On the other hand, here is the 1876 team, in which the person labeled Thayer looks more like the cabinet to me. His left ear is showing clearly in both the cabinet and the team photo, so maybe someone who knows how to do these things can match them up. To be clear, I am just posting the photos for research and discussion purposes. I really don't know the answer, I am just replying based on the original poster questioning the ID.

This last Harvard photo does have Thayer resembling the cabinet more. Was able to better detect the part in Thayer's hair which also matches photo and cabinet. Wright looks like he consistently parted his hair farther over on the right side of his head in all the photos. Thayer parted his hair more in the middle, just like on the cabinet.

Here is a cabinet i have of Thayer and Bancroft (labeled as such anyway).

Fred Thayer lived in Waverly Sq. in Belmont, MA and in fact he has a road named after him. I want to say that this photo doesn't look like him.