Secret Santa -- It's ON!

[brianp-beme]

I received a great bundle of deadball related items, several of which have a Black Sox angle, including:

- T218 of boxer Abe Attell - served as a go-between gamblers and Black Sox players.

- T202 McBride/Milan Schaefer on First - has been identified as potentially a 2nd card of Joe Jackson in the T202 set, as seen in this thread:

https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=268250

and the section of the original T202 Joe Jackson thread that pertains to this card:

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...263#post818263

- A 1920 Oakland newspaper with an article discussing the Black Sox scandal, as well as two separate articles on PCL player scandals that eventually ended in banishment for those involved.

- The Annotated Baseball Stories of Ring W. Lardner 1914-1919. He was one of the first journalist to raise red flags about the 1919 World Series, even as it was going on. I have liked what I have read from Ring in the past, a particular favorite was the short story "Hair Cut". While not baseball related, it has a great unreliable barber narrator that is relaying to his customers what a great person a recently deceased townsperson was, while all the things this person did could be considered completely reprehensible. Looking forward to reading his baseball works included, and the book has plenty of photos of deadball players too.

Also included was a Sport magazine from 1949 featuring a cover of Christy Mathewson, and a Curtis Candy ad card mentioning Baby Ruth candy.

A fun tidbit I discovered when checking on the ad card was that the Baby Ruth candy bar was first introduced in 1921 to capitalize on the popularity of Babe Ruth, but when the Babe got involved in 1926 to come out with a bar named "Ruth's Home Run Candy" with his image on the wrapper, the Curtiss Company sued, indicating with a farfetched statement that their Baby Ruth bar was actually named after Ruth, the oldest daughter of former President Grover Cleveland (even though Ruth had died in 1904), and that Babe Ruth's candy was a copyright infringement that was trying to capitalize on the popularity of the Baby Ruth bar. The ironic outcome is that a patent court years later ruled in favor of the Curtiss Company.

All in all a fun bunch that came down the chimney...thanks Secret Santa!

Brian