Here is what the card is:
1) Portrait photo of Deacon White
2) 1888 Old Judge card
3) Wrong team name – Indianapolis instead of Detroit
4) Wrong position – Manager instead of 3rd base
5) Wrong player name – McGreachery instead of White
There are three errors on the card, team name, position, and player name.
Old Judge made errors in team names at times (Lady Baldwin with Cincinnati, Kid Baldwin with Detroit are examples). Offhand, I don’t know of any other examples of wrong positions for players, but there probably were some (Jay and Joe would know better than me on this). There were plenty of misspelled player names in the Old Judge set.
OK, let’s sum up the possibilities for this card.
1) Traditional theory – the card is an unintentional error card, explained as follows:
a. Picture was taken in Indianapolis, so wrong team name of Indianapolis was put on the card by mistake.
b. Picture is a portrait, which were usually (not always) reserved for managers, thus the manager designation.
c. Name was intended to be a real Indianapolis player name of McGeachy, which is close to McGreachery.
Pros for traditional theory:
• Each error is possible, based on other errors within the Old Judge set.
Cons for traditional theory:
• Hard to believe all of these errors were accidentally applied to the same card.
2) CySeymour’s theory – the card is an intentional error card, explained as follows:
a. The name is meant to be a riddle about Deacon White – CySeymour’s current breakdown of the riddle is that it was a double-entendre based on the root words McCrea/Chery and Creach, meaning "Dear Son of God/Fall from Grace".
b. The manager part was intended to be a joke, based on White’s old age.
c. No explanation for the team name of Indianapolis.
Pros for the riddle theory:
• Because there are so many errors on this card, maybe the made-up name was done intentionally and included some hidden meaning (whether CySeymour is right or not in his interpretation is still open to conjecture).
Cons for the riddle theory:
• There are no other riddles in the Old Judge set, so why would they do this for this card.
To me, the interesting part of CySeymour’s theory is that the card may have been an intentionally created error card. That is still a possibility.
I don’t think it was, and I don’t think his hidden meaning is correct even if it was (I think the card is spelled with a “G” and not a “C” after the Mc, which would throw off his hidden meanings), plus I really don’t believe someone would have thought White had fallen from grace at that point in time or any other for that matter. He was a Hall of Fame-calibre player, which is why he is finally in now.
All this riddle stuff sounds more like trying to turn an unusual Old Judge card into a Da Vinci Code or National Treasure riddle. Those made for good fiction, but I don’t see any basis of this in reality with this card.
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