T206 Lundgren

[Archive]

Posted By: J Hull

Hey guys.

Lee's right, Lundgren (Kansas City) is not your typical minor league T206 card.

For one thing, he's the only player pictured with both a major league team and a minor league team. Secondly, he never played a game for the minor league team he's shown with. And that probably can't be blamed on a mixup at American Litho.

A while ago I did some research on Lundgren. As Ted notes, Lundgren only appeared briefly with the Cubs in 1909. His final game was April 23, after which he was benched for a time while the Cubs figured out what to do with him. Around the beginning of May he was placed on waivers, claimed by Brooklyn, and some sort of deal was worked out and his rights were sold to the Superbas. This was reported in the Sporting Life. I don't believe that Brooklyn intended to use Lundgren, but through acquiring his rights and then selling him on to the minors they hoped to pocket a few dollars on the deal. At least that's what I made of their interest, since he never pitched for them and was sold to Toronto of the American Association within a few days.

Lundgren's first appearance for Toronto was on May 24, 1909, and he pitched in a handful of games for them until his final appearance on June 7. By all reports he was not in good physical condition and his poor performances were blamed on that. After June 7 he was released by Toronto. The July 10 issue of Sporting Life reports that he had joined Kansas City. The Sporting Life is usually about a week or so behind in their reporting, so it's safe to assume that Lundgren, on paper, became a Kansas City player around July 1, 1909. But between that point and mid July some issue arose over Lundgren or his rights which led to a dispute between the Toronto and Kansas City clubs. As a result he never appeared for Kansas City. It's not even clear from reading about it that Lundgren ever set foot in Kansas City. The July 31 Sporting Life notes that the National Commission had awarded Lundgren to Toronto and that he was to report to that team at once. However, he sat out the remainder of the 1909 season, apparently either recovering from injury or trying to get himself into shape. He then spent some of 1910 pitching for Toronto.

The interesting thing about the Lundgren (Kansas City) T206 card is that the art for it was almost certainly created in the first half of July 1909. Theres no other card of a minor leaguer that can be so precisely timed. It was also soon pulled from production once Lundgrens case was sorted out, leading to its being distributed with just a few of the 350 series brands. The Lundgren (Kansas City) card is one of the reasons that I believe that at least some of the 350 series was released in the second half of the 1909 season, perhaps as early as August 1909.

Jamie