T210 Series 8 Mystery player
 

In the 1910 Old Mill Series 8 there is a player listed as Owen, Birmingham in the guides, but it actually spelled Ower. I can only find two images which sold are in REA in March of 2022 and March 2023. Recently while listing T210's for my upcoming auction I took a better look at this card and firmly believe there is another letter in front of the OWER, which I believe is an L.

Upon looking thru the Birmingham roster for 1909, 1910 and 1911 there is no one with this combination of letters of even more such as Flower, Glower, etc.

Does anyone have any info on whom the player is???

There’s an Andrew Bowen listed on their 1909 roster - a light hitting 2nd baseman who also played in the Virginia League in 1910. Perhaps?

I did see Bowen, although the last letter is clearly an R and not an N on the card and the first looks nothing like a B. ??

Nice looking card,maybe a ghost player/bench filler that never played. Here is my only one from Series 7, Cabrol which is not listed on any team roster

There is an "Ower" on PSA's pop report, which appears to be this one that sold in Sterling in 2011. SGC shows 4 T210-8 "Ower" and a "T210 Ower".

I agree that they meant Bowen, unless someone else has more information.

Andrew Bowen is already pictured in T210-2 (Portsmouth) and the corresponding H801-7 Old Mill cabinet (Petersburg).

I think it might be Cy Bowen. IF it is Bowen, he played for the Barons a couple of different seasons.
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Cy Bowen was a right-handed pitcher, and the Ower card looks like it could be a right-handed pitcher. Here are some photos of Cy Bowen from Baseball Reference.

Maybe someone with a newspaper archive subscription can find some Birmingham box scores with a similar name. Also here's the other Bowen from eBay.

So, Andy Bowen was traded from Birmingham to Danville on Jan 6, 1910. And, then somehow ended up with Portsmouth and later Petersburg.

It may be Louis Bauer, with last name misspelled, even though he already has a card in the series. Seems unlikely to be Cy Bowen, who was 39 years old in 1910 and pitching in the Central League, having just been in the NY State League since 1903. It also could be Andy Bowen, though, as there were players appearing in more than 1 league/series.

Make sure to post about the auction when live or even better if possible PM me so I don't miss it. I still need 3 or 4 to finish my T210 collection.

This is only pseudo-science at best (if at all), but here goes...

• I drew the yellow box on the right from where the black of the image ends to where the black text ends (this allows us to ignore the offset of the black printing over the red) under the assumption that they were on the same black printing plate, with the further assumption (I know nothing about this set) that the design layout had the text centered (and thus centered with regards to the black image).

• Next, I took the same yellow box and moved it to connect with the 'beginning' of the black image on the left. The end result is there is a decent amount of empty room between the yellow box and the start of the name "OWER," which there 'shouldn't' be.

Conclusion: If this card indeed had its name centered in the layout/design, then there is a missing letter that preceded "OWER" which has been lost to time.

Attachment 587272Attachment 587273

Until someone gets more info, I lean towards Louis Bower. But it's just a lean...

It brings to mind how the white border tobacco cards had Roy Ellam with Nashville in 1910, even though he wasn't with the Nashville Vols until 1917.

If i meet a "nineteen teens" time traveler person arrives in our time, I'll ask him about Ellam, first. Then, maybe Bower. And, also about the Black Sox (and Attell and Rothstein), Dutch Leonard, Charlie Faust, Hal Chase, Hub Perdue, and Bull Durham. Might ask about Bowen/Bower if his travelling time allows.

Nothing to substantiate but there was a player named Clarence “Buck” FLOWERS played throughout the south from 1906 to 1914. He is in the Series 5 set with Greenville and is right handed as well.


Could be a “FLOWER” that got trimmed to “.OWER”

Interesting thread.

I also noticed this card has a period after the name, the others have a comma.

In the Mar 10, 1910 Birmingham Post-Herald, there is a mention of a pitcher named "Lower".

The manager "Molesworth" of the Birmingham Barons, had evidently picked him up from Cincinnati. He had been drafted by Clark Griffith, out of Omaha.

In 1909, he won 20 games, in 32 starts.

Here's his Baseball-reference.com page:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/r...d=lower-001joh

Further, in the Jun 7, 1910 Birmingham Post-Herald, there is a story and box score for a game between Birmingham and Chattanooga. Lower started the game for Birmingham. It looks like he only pitched 1/3 of an inning. Chattanooga scored 6 runs in the first inning, and won 7-5

Steve

This seems like the most likely of the possibilities imo.

The thing that looks like a period before the name could be the right-most portion of an “L” that got partially covered when printed (or something like that)

John Lower, 26 years of age, is also listed in the 1910 US Federal Census, taken Apr 26, 1910, living in Birmingham, AL. His occupation is listed as "base ball player".

Steve

Great research, Steve, but BR lists him as left handed and the photo shows a right handed player. BR could be wrong, and Lower (Lauer?) was right handed, or image on card is a reverse image.

I think Andrew Bowen is pictured on 2 cards. Leader in the clubhouse. We may never know.

All I can say is that the information in my post above came directly from the 1910 articles in the Birmingham Post-Herald, and they correspond with the 1909 stats for John Lower on baseball-reference.com; and he is listed in Birmingham, as a baseball player, in the 1910 census.

Steve

Nice catch on Lower, Steve. He was on the team preseason and released June 10, 1910. Somewhat surprising his stats are not listed on Baseball Reference for the 1910 Barons. They got it wrong on his pitching arm too-- he was a righty, so it seems likely this is the intended subject of the T210 mystery man:
https://photos.imageevent.com/imover..._19__1910_.jpg

Birmingham Post-Herald: 14 Apr 1910, Thu · Page 12 [SAME PIC APPEARS IN TWO OTHER ISSUES OF THIS PAPER, with write-up on March 16, 1910]

I just found this picture of the 1910 Birmingham Barons on wikipedia:

https://www.bhamwiki.com/wiki/images...ham_Barons.jpg

You'll notice that the "B" logo is on each player's left arm, while the T210 card has it on the right sleeve.

So, it looks like a reversed negative.

Steve

I don't believe that photo to be conclusive. The players are wearing a variety of uniforms. Also, 2-3 other Barons in the t210 set show the logo on the right sleeve (Bauer and Emory, with Kane sporting a different "B" but also on the right sleeve) and others show a bare/blank left sleeve, so maybe they changed unis or perhaps there were some artistic liberties taken in production.
I would stick to that card being of Johnny Lower, a right-handed pitcher.

My guess: Billy Oyler, Utility player 1907 Birmingham team
 

I came across this eBay listing showing a player named Oyler whom played with the 1906 Birmingham team.

A further check of Baseball reference revealed that William Bashore Oyler was on the roster of both 1906 and 1907 Birmingham Barons team as a shortstop and second baseman.


https://www.baseball-reference.com/r...d=oyler-001wil

Patrick

For all of the face recognition experts here's a pretty good picture of Lower.

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric..._29__1910_.jpg[/IMG]

First, I'm no longer leaning towards Louis Bower...

The B patch, if it moved from a left sleeve to a right sleeve due to a reversing of the negative, why didn't the B itself reverse?

Flower and Lower seem real possibilities.

But let us not forget that pictures and names don't always match. Seabaugh and Weisman (who's actually Wiseman?) in E254 Colgans comes to mind. In T206 there's doubts about Tannehill. And there are many more.

[QUOTE=nolemmings;2369653]Nice catch on Lower, Steve. He was on the team preseason and released June 10, 1910. Somewhat surprising his stats are not listed on Baseball Reference for the 1910 Barons.
/QUOTE]

When a player does not appear in Baseball Reference statistics that usually is because Baseball Reference uses the statistical summaries from the Reach or Spalding guides. The guides often omitted players who failed to appear in a certain number of games (generally 10). A number of the players included in the T209 and T210 series are absent from Baseball Reference for this reason.

[QUOTE=spec;2369925]Good to know, although I bet some of these players are identified in team photos in the very guides that chose not to track their stats. I also see occasions, like here with Birmingham, where Baseball Reference lists players with no stats and with a question mark-- in this case Otis Stockdale and Moxie Maxwell.

Interestingly, there also seems to be some considerable discrepancy in what appears in Baseball Reference from what is shown in The Sporting Life. For example, the final 1910 season stats in the TSL show that Barons pitcher Fleharty had a record of 17-11, but Baseball Reference has him at 16-20. The other three pitchers with stated records in BR also do not match what is in TSL, although Flaherty is the most glaringly disparate. May not matter much to most folks 100+ years later, but I find it notable.

After seeing the additional evidence that y'all found, I now agree that "Lower" is the best answer.