Dammit Hoot Evers...

[sbfinley]

So one night last week I was doing my normal routine of have a drink (or 3) and scrolling eBay while a game played in the background. I was searching "team photo" randomly and something caught my eye. This was listed fairly cheaply as "1950's Army Basketball Team Photo" and although I don't collect much basketball for some odd reason I clicked on the listing. Immediately my eye was drawn to the player on the bottom left.



Now Ed White is surely a popular name, but I was fairly certain WAA referenced Waco Army Airfield and a quick search uncovered that Astronaut Ed White, who perished in the Apollo 1 fire, did his jet fighter training at the base after graduating West Point in 1952. I did some more digging and I found Ed's high school portrait and comparing them I felt that they looked similar, although I'm terrible at that.




At this point, on scotch number four, it was worth the $30 to go ahead an hit the BIN as the photo was a fairly newer listing and had almost a dozen followers already. At best I had a had a rare signature that fit both my sports collection and my historical autographs collection, and at worst I had an another cool photo for the man cave. Today the photo arrived and as the listing photo wasn't the best (Ed White was one of the few signatures I could make out) I was excited to get the photo in hand and research the other people in the photo to see if any connections to astronaut Ed White could be made. I read the signatures off and got to one in particular. Out loud to no one I said "Oh... Hoot Evers... that's really cool!" Then it hit me and I immediately corrected myself to "Dammit... Hoot Evers..."



While some some research uncovered that baseball player Hoot Evers spent WW2 at Waco Army Airfield to confirm my guess, he also famously replaced Ted Williams while the Hall of Famer served in Korea. Being as astronaut Ed White wouldn't have been at the Air Field until after graduating West Point in 1952 (and didn't graduate high school until after WW2 and Evers had returned to MLB) I am now certain the player in the bottom left is just Ed White and not Apollo Astronaut Ed White. Anywho, it's a cool piece that still has some baseball history and I'm happy to own.

Happy Collecting All.