Interesting thread...and I think Tim nailed it when he said it was simply a matter of timing. Southerners made up a small percentage of Major League baseball in 1909-11 and as such made up a small percentage of the Major Leaguers shown on T206 cards. To think that an American tobacco company interested in selling lots of cigarettes would snub a southern born superstar because of Southern prejudice just doesn't make sense at all. If that were so then why not snub the greatest Southern born superstar of them all in Cobb?? I think it's even more laughable to state that they would snub Alexander because of his drinking and epilepsy. How the ATC would even know about his epilepsy when it was never written about back then I don't know...and his drinking was certainly never a big problem in his younger days and probably overblown in the latter part of his career....There are some legendary drunks in the T206 set...highly doubtful the execs or employees of the ATC were teetotalers.
I think that the simple explanation is almost always the correct one when dealing with speculation.
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Looking for Nebraska Indians memorabilia, photos and postcards
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