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Joe_G.Variations, quite common with the crude methods used to make Old Judge cards. While both of your examples are from 1889, the matte used to "frame" Traffley and 23 others (sheet of 24), was positioned slightly different on the original cabinet card. In one example the matte allows you to see the approaching ball to his hands and no base, in the other, the matte frames a lower portion of the cabinet card cutting out the baseball but showing the entire base. Different croppings of the original cabinet as suggested above could have contributed to this variation (original cabinets were cropped to near proper size and then framed with a matte).
The Old Judge advertising at bottom was usually either glued or pinned to the cabinets or matting with many variations coming from differing placement of names, mis-spellings, or even accidental omissions (no name). Many teams, such as "Clevelands" can be found as "Cleveland" (drop the s) and so on. Many opportunities for variations.
Best Regards,
Joe Gonsowski