Newly Discovered Old Judge Player

[prewinter]

Originally Posted by Joe_G.

Circling back to some of the earlier posts . . .

Dummy Hoy was the last surviving player from the OJ set, passing Dec. 15th 1961, at age 99.

This moves the number of subjects in the OJ set to 523, two more than suggested by the OJ book. As Jay mentioned, there was the Tug Wilson discovery (proper identification of three Joseph Miller poses) and now Roscoe Coughlin.

The Maroons were hoarding pitchers. Roscoe makes six Maroon pitchers introduced to the OJ set in 1888 as follows:

95.5 Roscoe Coughlin
139 J. E. Dunn
141 Frank Dwyer
161 Fischer
344 J. W. Nicholson
433 Charlie Sprague

Glad my collecting focus isn't Chicago Maroons.

As I've been researching the Western Association, I did some digging into Fischer, and like others before me, I couldn't find anything. But I just noticed that there is a pitcher from the 1888 Maroons opening day unaccounted for in the n172 set - Arthur "Dad" Clarkson, brother of HOF pitcher John Clarkson. There is a photo of him on Baseball-Reference. The mustache looks like the one on Fischer. Don't know where the photo on Baseball-Reference came from, but could someone who has a better scan of the card take a look... just in case?

[oldjudge]

Paul-That’s a good thought. I have two Fischer cards with nice images and the mustaches are very similar. However, it appears that Clarkson had a more pronounced jaw. I’m not positive, but I would think they are different players. In general, teams were photographed for the Old Judge set during spring training. Fischer may have been in camp trying out when the photos were taken and was cut or left on his own before the season started. There are others in the set who never played a regular season game with the team that they are listed with. Keep up the research!

[brianp-beme]

Not Old Judge related, but sometimes photographers took spring training photos of people that were not even players without probably realizing their mistake. About 15 years ago I was checking through microfiches (remember those) of the local paper at the library to try to find some unidentified Salt Lake City players in the 1921 Zeenut issue, and discovered that one of them was identified in a newspaper article of that time period to be a trainer for the team.

Perhaps he was out there practicing in uniform with the club on a day when the photographers were in town, and thus made his way into set and baseball card immortality.

So the Old Judge Fischer mystery has been solved. He was a mustachioed trainer for the Maroon team.

Brian

[prewinter]

The weird thing about Fischer is that there is nothing in the newspapers at the time about a player named Fischer with the Whites. There are a few blurbs about Boyd scattered through the newspapers of the time, for example. Swartwood appears as rumors of signing with Des Moines in the papers. Minnesota has a couple of guys - Rhese, Jordan, Sterling - who were barely a blip on the club, and you can still find mention of their signing at some point in the record. Fischer, there's nothing.

He's not the Fisher that later played with Milwaukee and Davenport. That Fisher was an infielder, and he signed with Danville in January of 1888.

The mustachioed trainer theory has roots, I would say. Cheers all!

Paul W.

[oldjudge]

Paul-Have you checked all TSNs from March-May 1888? I was using a copy of the microfilm from Notre Dame's Library and they are missing some issues from that period. You might also try some period Chicago newspapers if you have access to them (I did not).

[prewinter]

Originally Posted by oldjudge

Paul-Have you checked all TSNs from March-May 1888? I was using a copy of the microfilm from Notre Dame's Library and they are missing some issues from that period. You might also try some period Chicago newspapers if you have access to them (I did not).

I've been working from the set of Sporting News available online through SABR, and it is missing the issues from that time period. I have looked (through newspapers.com) at Chicago papers, papers from Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota (the St. Paul Globe had awesome coverage of the Western Association), Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas... Fischer is such a common name that the searches bring up thousands of hits, so I could be missing some mention in my further filtering. But it is amazing how much baseball news there was in even small local papers of that time - even if it was just a blurb saying "Alcott of New Jersey has been signed by St. Louis of the Western Association". That's why I'm surprised I've seen nothing about a Fischer signing with the Maroons.

Arthur Clarkson was with the Maroon in spring training. The Tribune reported on March 25 that he signed with the Maroons. His first spring start was in mid-April. Boyd's signing shows up in the Sporting News in February, and he shows up in an article about the club in the Chicago Daily News as late as April 11.

Is there any sense of how deep into the summer of 1888 changes were being made to the Old Judge cards that year (new team designations, new players photographed/added)?

[oldjudge]

Unlike 1889, when updates to cards were common, I can’t recall any updates in 1888. Jake Beckley is listed with both the Whites and the Pittsburgh NL team in 1888, but I have never seen the Pittsburgh card and I believe that this listing may be an error. Off the top of my head, the only player that I recall having cards with two teams in 1888 is Charles Sprague who was shown with the Maroons and the White Stockings in separate images. This, however, was a function of Sprague actually being in two different photo shoots. He began the season with the NL team, was there for the photo shoot, but was released before the season started. He then moved to the neighbor Maroons and had photos taken with them.