Jim Byrnes appeared in 10 games with the Philadelphia A’s in 1906. That was the entirety of his proverbial cup of coffee in the big leagues. But in that short span he managed to have his portrait taken by Carl Horner and later appear in the Rose Company postcard set via a case of mistaken identity.
The story began when I acquired this 1906 Sporting Life postcard of the 1906 Philadelphia Athletics.
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The inscription read “Sept. 3, 1907…. Jim, Here are your old teammates. How do they look? Guess we get another flag. Signed ???”
On the back it is addressed to Mr. James Byrnes in San Francisco and was mailed from Philadelphia.
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A quick check of the 1906 A’s roster shows a Jim Byrnes who is listed as living in San Francisco in his Stats.com bio. This would explain the reference to “your old teammates”. Left unsolved now, and likely forevermore, is who the sender was. Perhaps a former teammate or a just a friend.
I soon discovered a 1906 team composite photo of the Philadelphia Athletics with the iconic Carl Horner images.
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Lo and behold, there is a Horner image of Byrnes listed as player #5. Now look back at our Sporting Life postcard. Every other player shown in the Horner composite photo found his way to the Sporting Life postcard, save and except our Mr. Byrnes. He was replaced by Ben Shibe, the A’s President. Oh the disrespect! But it gets worse.
I also acquired a 1910 Obak T212 that shows Byrnes with the Tacoma PCL club. Look they have used his 1906 Horner photo and retouched it to put a Tacoma uniform on him.
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At this point I said to myself, that guy looks familiar. So I pull out my Rose postcards, and who do I find but a postcard of Byrne of the St. Louis Cardinals.
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Clearly our Jim Byrnes from the 1906 Philadelphia Horner image. A quick check of the internet shows that Bobby Byrne broke into the Majors for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1907 and played with them through 1909 during which time the Rose postcards were issued, but he looks nothing like our Jim Byrnes.
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So, clearly a case of mistaken identity, Bobby Byrne in the Rose postcard set is clearly Jim Byrnes. But how did they make this mistake, aside from the obvious last name similarity?
The 1907 Spalding Baseball Guide provides the likely answer. Here is the Cardinals page form the 1907 Guide.
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Player #6 listed as Byrne is instead our Horner image of Jim Byrnes. My guess is as Bobby Byrne was just breaking into the Majors in 1907 they didn’t have an image of him and someone found the 1906 Jim Byrnes photo and thought it Bobby Byrne. When the Rose Company issued its postcard set in circa 1908, which used Horner images, someone there probably picked up copy of the 1907 Spalding Guide and said ok, here’s our Byrne photo.
So, Jim Byrnes truly was the Rodney Dangerfield of Deadball postcards, No Respect!
Now, if someone can just figure who signed the note on the 1906 Sporting Life A’s postcard!