It's not Cobb

[molenick]

I don’t want to muddy up the other threads about IDing photos, so here is my cautionary tale.

Years ago, I purchased this postcard at a show from a very reputable dealer. He showed it to me and asked if I wanted it. I said, sure, it's a nice image, but I was surprised at the price he quoted. He pointed to a person in the photo and said "it's Cobby" (for some reason I remember him saying Cobby).

There were no smart phones (or cell phones of any kind), no laptops where we could search for images. I didn't know what the McGraw Tigers were (the back is blank), but he said it was Cobb and after he said that I thought, wow, that's Cobb (I won't tell you which one it is, but there is one guy that looks like Cobb, to me at least). So, I bought it (luckily not at today's Cobb prices but for much more than a generic postcard would cost).

Years later I remembered it and did some modern-day research. The McGraw Giants were a local team that was based in Detroit! This was a baseball player that looked like Cobb on a Detroit team in the same era when he played!

Unfortunately, I found an article in a 1910 Detroit paper which identifies "Cobb" as "Anderson, catcher". I guess I could come up with some reason that this was still Cobb (it was an off day for the Tigers and Cobb was walking by and thought it would be funny to "photo bomb" the team picture) but realistically I had to admit that it was not him and that the more logical explanation is that there were two people in Detroit that looked similar at the time.