Stanley Ketchel Original Photo

[D. Bergin]

I was hoping Mark might chime in. There's a definite resemblance, but I had a funny feeling about it.

Question would be, who added the Joe O'Connor inscription to try to make it appear as if it was Ketchel?

Don't know of any O'Connor signatures myself, so was it old Joe himself, fooled by the image when he gave it away to some fan, or did it happen later on down the line?

[bmarlowe1]

Dave - I don't know what happened in this particular case, but in general anyone with an old photo and a pencil can write whatever they want. It's even easier still if the writing is not claimed to be that of the person claimed to be depicted.

It seems that nearly all misidentified 19thC and early 20thC baseball photos have the name written on the photo. That has been enough to fool a lot of people. I would guess it is the same for boxing.

[D. Bergin]

Good lord. Just stumbled across this:

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=...9080829.2.82.7


When I looked at the inscription, and then looked at the photo stamp, I noticed they both said Joe O'Connor.

Put O'Connor and Ketchel into Google and this popped right up.

Ketchel's manager for a bit, but also a photographer by trade. The photo is actually of O'Connor according to the newspaper article I linked to.

Amazing that fighter and manager looked so much alike.

It was all actually right there in the photo. I was mistaking the inscription. I thought it said "My Stanley Ketchel". It actually says "Mg (manager) Stanley Ketchel.

[bmarlowe1]

Nice find!

[ramram]

Boom. Nice work Dave.

[loubrown]

Wow. I checked out for a day and all kinds of information rolled in. Awesome input and great find. Very cool item but unfortunately, not Ketchel himself.
The resemblance was so strong that I didn't look as thoroughly as I should have.