Significant WaJo discovery and mystery

[Peter_Spaeth]

Odd that his face is more obscured than the other players.

[Peter_Spaeth]

You wonder if at 17 he had any idea how good he was.

Here we are 110 plus years later, and he would still probably get more votes than anyone else as the greatest ever.

[frankbmd]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

You wonder if at 17 he had any idea how good he was.

Here we are 110 plus years later, and he would still probably get more votes than anyone else as the greatest ever.

Did you forget about Mariano already?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by frankbmd

Did you forget about Mariano already?

I'm 200 miles from the Bronx.

Seriously, I don't see how there's any debate that the Big Train is #1, but I wouldn't call you insane if you said Grove or Seaver or Clemens.

[Jobu]

Very cool, thanks for sharing Hank.

I tried to dig around a bit and came across a 1922 bibliography of The Spalding Baseball Collection, online here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=9U...page&q&f=false

This shows at least two possibilities (there may be more):

Pg 6 Spalding's Official Pacific Coast Base Ball Book 1910-1911

Pg 23 Pacific Association of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States 1910

I know someone at the HOF that has helped me research a few things - if we reach a dead end here shoot me an email and I can drop her a line.

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by Jobu

Very cool, thanks for sharing Hank.

I tried to dig around a bit and came across a 1922 bibliography of The Spalding Baseball Collection, online here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=9U...page&q&f=false

This shows at least two possibilities (there may be more):

Pg 6 Spalding's Official Pacific Coast Base Ball Book 1910-1911

Pg 23 Pacific Association of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States 1910

I know someone at the HOF that has helped me research a few things - if we reach a dead end here shoot me an email and I can drop her a line.

Yes, please do, Bryan, and thanks for your help. If there was a 1906 version of the "Spalding Pacific Coast Base Ball Book," that would be the most likely candidate. Or, if that 1910-1911 edition was the only one ever done, perhaps they filled it out with teams from earlier years. There were also Spanish-American and British editions of the Spalding guide for 1906, I wonder if those might have included some semipro teams not in the regular American edition.

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I'm 200 miles from the Bronx.

Seriously, I don't see how there's any debate that the Big Train is #1, but I wouldn't call you insane if you said Grove or Seaver or Clemens.

IMO, there are at least a dozen, and maybe more like 15, that you can mount a credible case for.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by Hankphenom

IMO, there are at least a dozen, and maybe more like 15, that you can mount a credible case for.

There really were some great pitchers back in the day. Walter was certainly at or near the top, imo.
To the original first post, the discovery of this 1905 Olinda Oil Wells picture of him at 17 yrs old and in uniform, is a great way to start 2019!! Thanks for sharing it.



I was just reading his Wiki page and incidentally it has this other, much later picture of him there.

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by Leon

There really were some great pitchers back in the day. Walter was certainly at or near the top, imo.
To the original first post, the discovery of this 1905 Olinda Oil Wells picture of him at 17 yrs old and in uniform, is a great way to start 2019!! Thanks for sharing it.



I was just reading his Wiki page and incidentally it has this other, much later picture of him there.

Not that much later, Leon, just four years. He's still only 21 years old in yours. Incidentally, do we know whether those postcards ever got sold, or are your prototypes all there is to that issue? And I'm still looking for the source of that Olinda picture, clearly some kind of guide similar to the Spalding and Reach guides of the period, but right now that's all I know.

[swabie2424]

Amazing find. These types of posts make this place terrific. Thank you for sharing.

[Chris-Counts]

It looks like something that was cut out of an old baseball guide, like the ones produced by Spalding or Reach. I'm not sure how early they did these, but I have an Oakland Oaks team photo clipped from a 1912 guide, and it's cropped and labeled the same way. There's lots of these clippings on eBay, and they don't sell for much, although some of sellers claim they are some kind of premium, or even, a card.

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by Chris Counts

It looks like something that was cut out of an old baseball guide, like the ones produced by Spalding or Reach. I'm not sure how early they did these, but I have an Oakland Oaks team photo clipped from a 1912 guide, and it's cropped and labeled the same way. There's lots of these clippings on eBay, and they don't sell for much, although some of sellers claim they are some kind of premium, or even, a card.

Yes, it's definitely taken from a guide, and would have little or no value as such. However, the historical value of the only known--and previously thought not to exist--picture of Johnson at the very beginning of his professional career--is enormous. According to the link I provided with the listing of guides published, there were four of them in 1906: Spalding, Reach, LaJoie's, and Wright and Ditson. I went through the first three and not only didn't I find the Olinda team pictured, there weren't any semipro teams at all. I couldn't find a copy of the Wright and Ditson guide online, so I don't know about it. Perhaps the HOF or LOC has one. The page with the Olinda team picture is very much in the style of the guides I saw, as you pointed out.

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

You wonder if at 17 he had any idea how good he was.

Here we are 110 plus years later, and he would still probably get more votes than anyone else as the greatest ever.

At that point it was probably as much a surprise to him as it was to everyone else.