Tales of T212 #20 : George Wheeler

Back in the early 1980s I thought I'd combine my interests in minor league baseball and vintage baseball cards by assembling a collection of the Obak cigarette cards that were distributed on the West Coast in 1909, 1910 and 1911.I didn't realize it then, but those cards are so much rarer than most of the contemporary T206 cards from "Back East" that putting together complete sets of the Obak could take decades to accomplish -- and that's if a guy had more money than God to buy the cards when they became available.At about the time I started my Obak collection I also started researching the players who appeared in the sets. Over the course of several long Wisconsin winters I pored over microfilms of The Sporting News and The Sporting Life from the period several years before to several years after the Obak cards circulated, making prodigious notes on 3x5 file cards for each player in the set.I gave up trying to collect the T212s (that's the catalog number Jefferson Burdick assigned the three sets in the pioneering American Card Catalog in 1939), long ago, and have since sold off all my Obaks, one-by-one, first on eBay, then on the Net 54 baseball card forum. As I was selling each card, I included interesting tidbits about each player from my notes. The bidders seemed to like learning a little bit about these guys on the cards, so I thought I'd now begin sharing their stories here. Please excuse the lo-res nature of the card pictures; they were scanned for my auctions many years ago.

Ferreting out George Wheeler's identity was one the more challenging during my Obak biography quest. I had it wrong for a long time, attributing his Obak cards to George Harrison Wheeler, rather than the correct George Louis Wheeler. The George Wheelers' careers overlapped around the time of the cigarette card era.

Again it was the SABR Minor League Database that straightened things out for me. This George Wheeler was really even a Wheeler, he was born George L. Heroux in Methuen, Mass., on either July 30 or Aug. 3 (sources differ), 1869. George was a right-handed pitcher who is said to have thrown lefty on occasion; he was a switch hitter, as well. Naturally enough he began his pro career in the northeast, at the age of 22 in 1892. Between 1892-1896 he played in the Class B New England League for Manchester/Lawrence, Lewiston and Bangor.

In mid-September of 1896 he made his major league debut with the Philadelphia Phillies. He was 1-1, earning a permanent spot in the 1897 rotation. He had an 11-10 record that year and pitched part of each of the next two seasons with the Phils, playing with Rome of the N.Y. State League in between major league tours (and also in 1900-1901). His overall big league record was 21-20 with a 4.24 ERA.

Wheeler also pitched in the American League, but it was in 1900 for the Milwaukee Brewers, before the A.L. was considered a major league. After opening the 1902 season with the Syracuse Stars of the NYSL, Wheeler took his act to the West Coast, where he spent the rest of his baseball days, increasingly filling the role of a utility player and pinch hitter. He played with Los Angeles in 1902 and 1903, before the formation of the Pacific Coast League as aClass A minor league. He opened 1904 wiht L.A., then moved to San Francisco through the 1907 season. He was traded back to the Angels in 1908 and closed out his playing days with them in 1911. He appears in al three Obak card sets of the era.

In 1913-1914 he managed Fresno in the outlaw California League and in mid-season 1914 joined the Northwestern League's umpiring staff. When his baseball days were over, Wheeler retired to farming. He died in Santa Ana, Calif. on March 21, 1946.

Standard Catalog Update #36 : 1954 A's Stickers

Considering that the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards' 20th edition is in the works, the set which is listed as 1954 Philadelphia A's Stickers is a relatively new addition to the comprehensive guide.

It was added about four years ago with a checklist comprising 10 players, and it was noted that "The issuer of this novelty set and the exact scope of its checklist are currently unknown."

We still don't know who issued it, or how it was distributed (my best guess would be a stadium concession stand souvenir). We do, however, have a better idea of the set's scope, thanks to reports from a couple of collectors, most recently including Scott Roberts, who provided the scans shown here.

The stickers are black-and-white, printed on gummed paper. They are uniformly about 4-1/2" wide, but range in height from about 6-1/2" to 8-1/4", depending on the pose. An instruction printed on each piece says, "Moisten back. Paste on Cardboard and cut out."

In 1954, The Athletics were in their final season in Philadelphia. They ended the season with a 51-103 record, 60 games behind the pennant-winning Cleveland Indians.

Here's the revised checklist for the sticker set:

1. Joe Astroth
2. Don Bollweg
3. Bob Cain
4. Joe DeMaestri
5. Marion Fricano
6. Forrest Jacobs
7. Eddie Joost
8. Alex Kellner
9. Morrie Martin
10. Ed McGhee
11. Arnold Portocarrero
12. Vic Power
13. Bill Renna
14. Jim Robertson
15. Bob Shantz
16. Pete Suder
17. Bob Trice
18. Elmer Valo
19. Leroy Wheat
20. Gus Zernial

As you can see, there were no Hall of Famers on the team, and only a few players who are recognized as even minor stars today -- Zernial, Shantz, Power. The checklist stands at 20, which is a nice round number. The only regular missing is third baseman Jim Finigan. Whether or not this checklist will stand remains to be seen.

The "big book" currently lists the stickers at $25 in NM, $12.50 in EX and $7.50 in VG for most players, with a few of the bigger names at $35, $17.50 and $10.50. That seems cheap to me considering the age and scarcity of these collectibles, but the few that have sold recently at auction haven't generated sufficient demand to warrant raising the prices.

Tales of T212 #19 : Harry Scharnweber

Back in the early 1980s I thought I'd combine my interests in minor league baseball and vintage baseball cards by assembling a collection of the Obak cigarette cards that were distributed on the West Coast in 1909, 1910 and 1911.I didn't realize it then, but those cards are so much rarer than most of the contemporary T206 cards from "Back East" that putting together complete sets of the Obak could take decades to accomplish -- and that's if a guy had more money than God to buy the cards when they became available.At about the time I started my Obak collection I also started researching the players who appeared in the sets. Over the course of several long Wisconsin winters I pored over microfilms of The Sporting News and The Sporting Life from the period several years before to several years after the Obak cards circulated, making prodigious notes on 3x5 file cards for each player in the set.I gave up trying to collect the T212s (that's the catalog number Jefferson Burdick assigned the three sets in the pioneering American Card Catalog in 1939), long ago, and have since sold off all my Obaks, one-by-one, first on eBay, then on the Net 54 baseball card forum. As I was selling each card, I included interesting tidbits about each player from my notes. The bidders seemed to like learning a little bit about these guys on the cards, so I thought I'd now begin sharing their stories here. Please excuse the lo-res nature of the card pictures; they were scanned for my auctions many years ago.

Known variously in his playing days as "Henry" or "Harry," Scharnweber was a light-hitting shortstop. He was born in Iowa in 1882 and spent his early years as a professional ballplayer around the Midwest.

He debuted in the Three-I (Illinois-Indiana-Iowa) League in 1902, playing for both Bloomington and Rockford at the Class B level. When he hit only .179 for the year, he was sent down to Class D Grand Forks for 1903 and Waterloo for 1904 (the team carried the unlikely nickname of the Microbes).

Scharnweber returned to the Three-I League for 1905, and spent the next four seasons with Springfield, including managing the team in 1907 at the age of only 25 (they finished third). In 1909 he moved out West to the Vancouver Beavers of the Northwestern League, also a Class B circuit. He played with Vancouver for six seasons -- remarkable consistency for the minor leagues in that era. He man aged the team in 1914 and won the NWL pennant. The team finished fourth in 1915 under Scharnweber.

His whereabouts from 1916-1919 are unrecorded. In 1920 he joined the newly formed South Dakota League as manager of the Mitchell Kernels, and at the age of 38 played some shortstop and hit .295. The Kernels won the pennant that year, and also in 1921 and 1922 with Scharnweber at the helm. One of Scharnweber's prize players in 1920 was future Hall of Famer Jim Bottomley, playing in his first pro season. The league folded in mid-1923.

Scharnweber must have hung around the Mitchell, S.D., area after his playing days, because that's listed as his locale on the U.S. Patent (#2,088,753) he was granted in 1937 for an automotive air cooling apparatus!

Standard Catlog Update #35 : 1966 Mantle anomaly

Some weeks back reader Steve Stazenski contacted us about an unusual 1966 Topps Mickey Mantle card he had in his collection. The card is unusual in that its number on back appears to

have been printed in green, rather than the usual orange/red ink.

My first thought was that this might be a Venezuelan-issued '66 Topps. While I'd never heard that the card numbers of the South American version Topps cards were green, I'd never heard that they weren't.

I posed some inquiries on some of the baseball card forums and a couple of the top Venezuelan specialists informed me that the card numbers on that issue were not green, they were the same color as the player name and stats box, just like on the Topps U.S.A. cards.

One or two collectors raised the idea that the "50" on this card may have turned green as a reaction to chemical exposure. I'm not inclined to accept that theory, because there is no indication that any of the other red ink, nor the black, nor the card stock had been altered by a foreign substance.

The theory that seems most plausible to me, but which I have been unable to verify, is that this particular Mantle was cut off the three-card salesman's sample strip that Topps used back in the 1950s and 1960s to alter retailers on the look of the product. While the backs of those strips usually were predominantly given over the a sales pitch, at least one card on the strip was usually presented with a full back, again to give the retailer an idea of what the new cards had to offer.

I'm hoping that one of you can provide a scan of such a 1966 sales strip to verify this notion. Otherwise this card will have to be considered merely an anomaly or curiosity.

1952 Red Man Mickey Mantle Custom Card

I've expanded my custom card repertoire with this latest creation. It's a "what might have been" fantasy card of Mickey Mantle in the format of the 1952 Red Man tobacco cards.

My custom Mantle is in the original 3-1/2" x 4" format. To better replicate the original Red Mans, I used a thinner cardboard stock for this one. It really has the "feel" of the originals.

As opposed to most of my custom cards, on which the back -- which usually has biographical details, stats, cartoons, etc. -- takes more time to create than the front, this one was a snap. Since the backs of 1952 Red Mans (and 1953, 1954, 1955, as well) were "generic," I only had to scan an original and clean it up a bit.

The front is essentially a mashup of three elements. The background is from the front of a 1955 Red Man Whitey Ford card. With one click in my Photochop Elements graphics program, I flopped the image and moved the Yankee Stadium details from the left to the right side of the card.

The coupon at bottom started out on a scan I found on an auction site of a 1952 Red Man Ted Williams card. I changed the card number and cleaned up the typography and color bars.

Mantle's picture came from the cover of the 1953 Dell Baseball Annual. I had to do a lot of trial-and-error cutting and pasting to find a size and positioning that would allow for maximum detail yet still leave room for the text box.

I've always been frustrated that the Photoshop Elements program doesn't have the ability to create justified text . . . at least not that I've ever been able to find on my ancient 2.0 version.
After giving the matter some thought and trying a few workarounds, I determined that if I wanted to create justified text such as usually found on baseball cards, I'd just have to bite the bullet and do it the hard way. After writing my text in the designated space, I nudge every single word of it into a position that creates a pretty good approximation of justified type.

There's currently one more Red Man-style card on my to-do list, though I don't know when I'll actually get it into production. You'll see it here first.

As always, you can access images of many of my custom card creations at www.tinyurl.com/customcards. If you think you'd like any of the actual cards as holiday gifts, contact me for details at scbcguy@yahoo.com.

Standard Catalog Update #34 : You like Globes? We got 'em!

Among the subjects we regularly touch on in this space, one of the most popular appears to be the early 1950s Globe Printing Co. minor league team sets.

One of Globe's biggest fans and most ardent collectors, though he, like all other Globe collectors has a tough time finding specimens to add to his holdings, is Mark Bowers.

Mark recently sent in some enhancements to the checklist for the 1952 Dallas Eagles set which we share with you herewith.

Like all Globe minor league sets, there is nothing on the cards to identify the Dallas set as being a Globe product. And, while the Dallas cards are not identical in format to other known Globes, they have more in common than they do differences. The Dallas cards, as exemplified (BTW: Why isn't it "examplified?) by the Don Mossi pre-rookie shown here, have a white border. They are, however, in the same 2-1/4" x 3-38" size with full-length player photos in a stadium setting and a simple name strip. So, it is more likely than not that they are from Globe.

Another difference between the Dallas set and most other Globe issues, is that there are currently 21 known players on the checklist. Most other Globe sets top out at 18 cards. Since it appears that most Globes were printed on six-card sheets, we might reasonably expect to see three more Dallas Eagles cards in the future.

The Eagles were the Class AA Texas League farm club of the Cleveland Indians. Looking over their roster for 1952, about the biggest name that has not yet been seen in the set is pitcher Jose Santiago, though there were a few other cup-of-coffee future major leaguers on the team.

Here, then, is the revised checklist for the Globe Printing Co. 1952 Dallas Eagles team issue (Mark's recent additions are in bold):

Ralph Albers

Dick Aylward

Jodie Beeier

Bob Bundy

Johnny Creel

Bob Cullins

Hal Erickson

Dave Hoskins

Bud Hutson

Edward Knoblauch

Joe Kotrany

Joe Macko

Allan Maul

Peter Mazar

Dutch Meyer

Don Mossi

Clyde Perry

Ray Peters

Harry Sullivan

Frank Tornay

Edward Varhely

Tales of T212 #18 : Franklin J. Spencer

Back in the early 1980s I thought I'd combine my interests in minor league baseball and vintage baseball cards by assembling a collection of the Obak cigarette cards that were distributed on the West Coast in 1909, 1910 and 1911.I didn't realize it then, but those cards are so much rarer than most of the contemporary T206 cards from "Back East" that putting together complete sets of the Obak could take decades to accomplish -- and that's if a guy had more money than God to buy the cards when they became available.At about the time I started my Obak collection I also started researching the players who appeared in the sets. Over the course of several long Wisconsin winters I pored over microfilms of The Sporting News and The Sporting Life from the period several years before to several years after the Obak cards circulated, making prodigious notes on 3x5 file cards for each player in the set.I gave up trying to collect the T212s (that's the catalog number Jefferson Burdick assigned the three sets in the pioneering American Card Catalog in 1939), long ago, and have since sold off all my Obaks, one-by-one, first on eBay, then on the Net 54 baseball card forum. As I was selling each card, I included interesting tidbits about each player from my notes. The bidders seemed to like learning a little bit about these guys on the cards, so I thought I'd now begin sharing their stories here.

"Stub" Spencer was nearing the end of a lengthy, though undistinguished, minor league career when he made his lone Obak baseball card appearance in the 1911 set. (By the way, I'm long overdue apologizing for the quality of the card pictures I use in these postings. They are lo-res images that I scanned from my Obak collection many years ago. The cards are now long dispersed in other collections, so I'm stuck with what I had.)

We don't know when or where Spencer was born. The SABR Minor League Database records his first professional engagement as being with St. Paul in 1901. A player's first pro team is often, though by no means not always, close to home, so it's possible Spencer was a "western" boy. He did, in fact spend his entire pro career west of the Mississippi River.

Spencer started out as an outfielder. In 1902 he was with three of the six teams that made up the short-lived (1902-1903) Class D Iowa-South Dakota League: the Sioux City Cornhuskers, Sioux Falls Canaries and Le Mars Blackbirds. Though the league's stats appear to have been unrecorded, Spencer earned a berth on a Class A team, Seattle of the Pacific National League, for 1903. In 1904 he was with Butte, also in the PNAL.

In 1905, Bellingham of the Northwestern League moved Spencer went behind the plate, where he remained for the rest of his playing days. It looks like Spencer spent most of his career as a second-string catcher, obviously because of his light hitting. Between 1903-1913, he never hit above .248, and four times failed to break out of the .100s. He had only two career home runs.

Spencer rarely spent more than a single season with any team. In 1906 he was with Davenport. He played for both Vancouver and Aberdeen in 1907, and split 1908 with Aberdeen and Butte. In 1909 he was with Spokane. He played for Seattle and Tacoma in 1911 and ended his professional career in 1913 at Edmonton. In looks like Spencer was out of Organized Baseball in 1910 and 1912.

As with his birth specifics, the date and place of his death are unknown.

UPDATE: Veteran collector Dave Eskenazi, who specializes in early professional baseball in the Northwest, has provided some further details about Stub Spencer. Armed with his findings, it looks like we've also found Spencer's whereabouts during the 1910 season.

In 1910 the Edmonton Eskimos of the Western Canada League had a catcher named Spencer. Since biographical details (such as furst names) for that Class D minor league circuit are hard to come by, we can't be sure, but it looks like that was ol' Stub. He hit a decent .280 that season.

After his return to the NWL with Seattle and Tacoma in 1911, Spencer was back in the WCL in 1912, with the Red Deer (Alberta) Eskimos, where he hit .251. That's Spencer's photo, provided by Dave, at left.

We noted earlier that he had ended his pro career with Edmonton of the WCL in 1913, but Dave found both a photo and a record that show that Spencer caught for the Saskatoon Quakers of the WCL in 1914, when they won the league pennant, though Spencer contributed only a .146 batting average to the effort.

Standard Catalog Update #20-21a : Another Globe Discovery

O.K., I think I've got it now. Another piece of the puzzle that is the Globe Printing Co. minor league opus of the early 1950s has come our way . . . and forced a correction to what we had posted here on Aug. 25.

In that post we listed a checklist of nine Globe Printing Co. Ponca City Dodgers, speculating they were probably part of a set of 18, since it appears that Globe printed six-card sheets. The next day we posted about a Globe card for Fred "Rip" Collins, that had been reported by the same collector who turned up the P.C. Dodgers. We speculated that the Collins was probably part of a Globe team-set of the Independence Browns.

The other day, in response to the SCD Update #20-21, we heard from collector Chuck Hensley, woh has a friend who has a 1952 Globe Ponca City Dodgers album, with all nine of the checklisted P.C. Dodgers. What really caught my attention, though, was that the scans he sent also included the Rip Collins card, along with two other non-Dodgers.

Earlier I had been willing to believe that the inclusion of the Collins card with the first group of P.C. Dodgers was an anomaly, but when the same card turned up in a second grouping, it dawned on me that Collins was actually part of the Ponca City issue.

The two other non-Dodgers cards that Hensley has in the album are Hershel Martin and Al Reitz. It then became clear that Globe's issue for the P.C. Dodgers included not only their manager Boyd Bartley, but also the managers of at least three other teams from the 1952 Kansas-Oklahoma-Missouri League. Collins, as mentioned was one of them. A little poking around on the SABR Minor League database confirmed that Reitz and Martin were also K-O-M skippers in '52.

Reitz was plying manager for the Blackwell (Okla.) Broncos, the Chicago Cubs affiliate in the Class D K-O-M. Martin was manager of a Pirates farm team that moved from Bartlesville, Okla., to Pittsburg, Kans. during the 1952 season, the final year for the K-O-M.

Reitz was a career minor league player and manager whose career spanned 1924-1953. He made it as far as Milwaukee and Buffalo, but never saw any major league meal money. With the Broncos in 1952, he was still pitching at age 48.

Martin, in contrast, did enjoy a modest major league career, albeit mostly during the WWII years. After having been playing professionally since 1932, he spent the 1937-1940 seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies. He appears in both the 1939 and 1940 Play Ball card sets. After stints wiht Jersey City, Tulsa and Milwaukee, 1940-1944, he was traded to the New York Yankees, for whom, he played in 1944-45. After the war he played in 1946-1947 for Oakland in the Pacific Coast League, where he appeared on such regional minor league issues as the 1946-1947 Remar Bread Oaks, and the 1947 Signal Oil Oaks. He remained in the minors as a player and/or manager through 1957. With the K-O-M Pirates in 1952, at the age of 42, he managed and played some at first base and in the outfield, batting .298.

With those three managers and the nine known P.C. Dodgers, we come up with 12 cards -- two press sheets if Globe followed its usual format. Whether or not there was a third six-card sheet with a few more of the P.C. Dodgers and [the other managers of the K-O-M League, Woody Fair of the Iola Indians and John Davenport of the Miami Eagles, remains to be seen.

Harry Decker: Catcher, inventor, convict . . . missing

One of the more interesting players to be found among the 500 or so in the Old Judge tobacco card series of 1887-1890 is Harry Decker. He not only played four seasons of major league ball and was immortalized on a baseball card, but he was also an inventor and a felon.

Decker was born in Lockport, Ill., in 1864. His given name was Earle Harry Decker, but in the course of his lifetim, he was known to have adopted several aliases, making the tracking of his life outside of baseball impossible.

He began playing pro ball with Evansville as a teenager in 1884, before Indianapolis, then in the major league American Association, signed him later that season. After just a handful of games with the Hoosiers, he joined a second short-lived major league, the Union Association, with the Kansas City Cowboys.

Though the UA folded after just one season, Decker remained with the Kansas City team in the Western League for 1885.

He opened the 1886 season with Macon, then it was back to the bigs, with both Detroit, then Washington, of the National League. He was not a strong enough hitter to stick in the majors, even as a second- (or third- ) string catcher and utilityman, so he played the 1887-1888 campaigns with Toronto in the International Association.

Decker was again called to major league service in 1889 with Philadelphia, but was released in late July. He caught on with the Phillies again to start the 1890 season, then was sold in June to the Pittsburgh Alleghenys, with whom he batted .274 and hit all five of his major league home runs.

Decker's last known gig in professional baseball was in 1891 with the New Haven Nutmegs of the Eastern Association.

He next pops up publicly in 1904, when he filed for a patent on a catcher's mitt. According to Decker's application, "My invention relates to certain new and useful improvements in base-ball gloves, and has more particular reference to that type known as 'catchers' mitts.'

"The primary object of my improvement," Decker claimed, "is to provide a glove which is thumbless and, further, one in which the padding can be adjusted or regulated to suit the user."
The specifics of Decker's glove can be seen by searching on his name in a Google Patent Search, for, indeed, Decker was granted U.S. patent number 812921 in February, 1906.

Somewhere along the road, Decker fell into a life of crime, and in the 1910s his home was in San Quentin prison in California, where he was serving time under the name Earl Henry Davenport.
An item in the March 7, 1915, Sporting Life by an unnamed writer mentioned Decker, "The star base ball team of San Quentin prison, to which the Venice and Los Angeles teams sent uniforms last season, has sent Manager Hogan [of the L.A. Angels] an autographed photo of their team.

"They are led by a player who calls himself Davenport, but who is E.H. Decker, who is said to have been a catcher for the Detroit team years ago. When the writer knew him he was catching for the Keokuk, Iowa, team, and was a good man in the field in his position."

According to baseball historian Peter Morris, who is active in the SABR Biographical Committee, Decker was released from San Quentin in 1915, but can be traced no further due to a "very long career of crime" and the many aliases he used. The committee would like to be able to attached a date and place of death to Decker's records.

Decker appears on no fewer than five different poses in the Old Judge cigarette cards, all with Philadelphia. His cards are priced as "commons," but like many Old Judge cards, finding a specific player in the hobby market at any one time can be a challenge.

Standard Catalog Update #33: Another loopy 1954 Bowman Dodger

We have confirmed another "loop / no loop" variation card in 1954 Bowman, and like the other recently discovered variation, it involves a Brooklyn Dodger's card. In this case, it is #218 Preacher Roe. The report came via e-mail from collector Peter Eilenberg. That's Peter's PSA-slabbed Roe card in the picture.

Details of the earlier variation, including our theory on how the variation was created, can be found by checking out our postings of Sept. 24 and Oct. 26 regarding a similar error/correction on the 1954 Bowman Carl Erskine card.

It would be interesting to know which player's card appeared above Roe's on the printing sheet, and thus whose autograph originally intruded into the top of Roe's card. If you can provide that information, please drop me a line in the Comments section or by e-mailing to scbcguy@yahoo.com.

A check of eBay on the day this variation crossed my desk showed 12 1954 Bowman Preacher Rowe cards offered at auction or in stores. Four of those showed the loop. That's a significantly greater percentage of "loop" cards vs. "no-loop" than has been the case thus far with the Erskine variations.

The Roe variation will be added to the 1954 Bowman set in the 2011 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards.

My custom creation John Madden football card

Another of my custom card creation projects has been completed, a 1959-style football card of John Madden. Love 'im or hate 'im, Madden has been a significant factor in the broadcasting realm that helped make the NFL the fan favorite that it is.

Madden started at both offensive and defensive tackle at California Polytechnical University San Luis Obispo and was the 244th player selected in the 1958 NFL draft.

He injured his knee in the Eagles training camp and never played in the NFL.

Madden was in camp long enough for the Topps photographer to take at least one photo of him, a color shot of Madden in the three-point stance. The photo, however, is so fuzzy that it couldn't have been used on a Topps card back then, or even on my custom card creation 50 years later. I was fortunate enough, though, to find a great black-and-white portrait of Madden on the internet. It appears to have been taken by the team photographer. It colorized real nice and the result is what you see above.

What else was Grisham wrong about?

While on vacation recently I read the first John Grisham book that I had picked up in more than 20 years.


The Innocent Man (2006), rather than being one of his crime/courtroom novels, was touted as the true story of a man wrongly sent to death row in Oklahoma.


I decided to give it a read when I found out that the principal character was a former minor league baseball player by the name of Ronald K. Williamson.


Williamson knocked around the A's farm system 1972-73, then after a couple of years off, was given a shot by the Yankees with Oneonta.

According to both the SABR Minor League database and the Baseball Guides for the appropriate years, Williamson started pro ball with the Koos Bay-North Bend A's short-season A team in 1972 after being drafted by Oakland as a catcher. He ended the '72 season with Brulington in the Midwest League and opened the 1973 season there. He was cut after five games and finished the season in the Florida State League with the independent Key West Conchs.

Williamson was out of OB in 1974-1975, drinking, doing drugs and committing petty crimes.

The Yankees gave his another shot in pro ball in 1976, signing him as a pitcher and assigning him to Oneonta in the New York-Pennsylvania League. He pitched eight innings in five games, giving up 12 earned runs (13.50 ERA) and walking 15. According to the "official" sources, that was the end of Williamson's professional baseball career.

However, according to Grisham's supposedly factual account, Williamson pitched for the 1977 Ft. Lauderdale Yankees of the Florida State League. The photo section of the book even shows a picture it says is the cover of a team program with Williamson and three others in a posed photo. Grisham even quotes such statistics that say Williamson pitched 31 innings in 14 games with a 2-4 record. However, there is nothing in the SABR records or the 1978 Guide to support that.

Since Grisham never met Williamson and didn't publish his book until 2006, two years after Williamson's liver did him in, it's possible the author took the word of a mis-remembering relative for the 1977 discrepancy.

While such a glaring factual faux pas gives one pause to wonder what else Grisham may have gotten wrong in this supposedly factual account, the book is worth reading. Former minor leaguer Ron Williamson was a bad-ass, but not of sufficient depravity to have warranted the downright abuse of the legal system that put him on death row, evem in those days when forensic criminal science was in its infancy.

OT Rant : Lazy Linguistics

Smart-alecks sometimes ask why we Cheeseheads pronounce Brett Favre's name as "Farv."

Probably the same reason Wednesday is Wensday, and February is Febuary . . . lazy linguistics.

For that matter, it's prob-ab-ly, not prob'ly or prolly.

And it's re-mem-ber, not 'member

And irony is pronounced EYE-ron-ee, not eye-er-nee. It's ironic that folks don't have the same problem with "ironic."

I finished my 1969-style Garvey

Well, I did it. I finished my 1969-style Steve Garvey "rookie" card. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out; I think I got the back color much closer to the original hue than I did with my 1969-style Thurman Munson.

I'm going to use this card to test a new process that will allow me to give my cards a glossy front finish like the originals. I found a self-adhesive sheet of lamination that's produced by the same company (Avery) that I use for the sheets on which I print my fronts and backs. I think getting the glossy laminate onto the fronts will be a bit tricky, and I'll likely run the first couple of attempts, but I think the final result will be worth it.

I hope getting this card off the drawing board will prove to be the incentive I needed to get back into more regular production. I've got so many projects waiting in the wings, it's hard to decide which to tackle next.

Tales of T212 #17 : Chester "Pinch" Thomas

Back in the early 1980s I thought I'd combine my interests in minor league baseball and vintage baseball cards by assembling a collection of the Obak cigarette cards that were distributed on the West Coast in 1909, 1910 and 1911.I didn't realize it then, but those cards are so much rarer than most of the contemporary T206 cards from "Back East" that putting together complete sets of the Obak could take decades to accomplish -- and that's if a guy had more money than God to buy the cards when they became available.At about the time I started my Obak collection I also started researching the players who appeared in the sets. Over the course of several long Wisconsin winters I pored over microfilms of The Sporting News and The Sporting Life from the period several years before to several years after the Obak cards circulated, making prodigious notes on 3x5 file cards for each player in the set.I gave up trying to collect the T212s (that's the catalog number Jefferson Burdick assigned the three sets in the pioneering American Card Catalog in 1939), long ago, and have since sold off all my Obaks, one-by-one, first on eBay, then on the Net 54 baseball card forum. As I was selling each card, I included interesting tidbits about each player from my notes. The bidders seemed to like learning a little bit about these guys on the cards, so I thought I'd now begin sharing their stories here.

Among the players who appeared in the 1909-1911 Obak card sets, one of those who enjoyed a significant major league career was catcher Chester "Pinch" Thomas. Thomas not only spent 10 season in the American League as a backup catcher for the Red Sox (1912-1917) and Indians (1918-1921), he was on the winning team in four World Series (Boston 1912, 1915-1916; Cleveland 1920).

Thomas was born in west-central Illinois in 1888. His first stop in pro ball was at age 19 in 1907 with San Jose of the outlaw California State League, where he was a teammate of Hal Chase.

He made his debut in Organized Baseball with Oakland of the Pacific Coast League in 1909. He split 1910 with Oakland and Sacramento, and was with Sac'to in 1911. The back of his 1911 Obak card stretches the truth a little in describing him as the "best hitting catcher in the Coast League." He actually batted only .262 with one home run in those three seasons. Early in 1911, Thomas was beaten and robbed by thugs in San Francisco, and for a time it looked like he would lose the sight in one eye.

Nonetheless, the Red Sox drafted Thomas for 1912, as a backup backstop to Bill Carrigan and Hick Cady. After the 1917 season, he was traded to the Philadelphia Athletics, but he never played for them in an A.L. game, being sold to the Cleveland Indians on June 1, 1918, as a reserve catcher behind Steve O'Neill. He was released by the Indians on July 21, 1921, leaving the big leagues with a .237 career average.

Thomas signed on with Hartford of the Eastern League as playing manager in late 1921. He signed with Salt Lake City for 1922, but didn't play. In 1923 he was a playing manager for both the Portland and Oakland PCL clubs.

Thomas was a successful motion picture director in the off-seasons. He died in Modesto, Calif., on Christmas Eve, 1953.

I've been a slug

I have really been slacking off in my custom card creations. It has been six or eight weeks since I've completed a new card. I've been doing bits and pieces on several on-going projects, but haven't completed anything new.

Part of the problem was a computer change. The power supply on my old computer just crapped out. I've got a new unit up and running now, but the set of fonts that I have been relying on for my card creations for the past 5+ years was compromised. Now, each time I need to resurrect one of my old favorite fonts, I have to schlep to the office and download it from my old, old laptop, then bring it home and upload it on the new computer.

I ran into that again this morning as I was working on a 1969 Topps-style rookie card of Steve Garvey. So, I'll have to halt production on the front of the card until I get a particular font family installed.

I thought I'd share with you a bit of Photoshop manipulation I used for the pictutre on the 1969 Garvey. For the past six month or a year, the images that Topps puts on eBay of the vintage transparencies they sell from their "vault," have carried a watermark. It makes "borrowing" an image for making a card somewhat more difficult, but not impossible. With a couple of hours of noodling on Photoshop, I've been able to eliminate the watermark, or at least minimize it to the point it's not visible on the finished card.

I thought I'd share a before and after look at the Garvey photo I'll be using. Besides getting rid of the Topps logo, I've added a bit of brighter blue to the sky.

I'll be sure to share the final results here when I'm done . . . hopefully by the end of the weekend.

Drinking cerveza Maracucho style

Our good friend from Maracaibo explains how to drink a beer in Record-Guinness-style.

Tales of T212 #14 : Blaine Thomas

Back in the early 1980s I thought I'd combine my interests in minor league baseball and vintage baseball cards by assembling a collection of the Obak cigarette cards that were distributed on the West Coast in 1909, 1910 and 1911.I didn't realize it then, but those cards are so much rarer than most of the contemporary T206 cards from "Back East" that putting together complete sets of the Obak could take decades to accomplish -- and that's if a guy had more money than God to buy the cards when they became available.At about the time I started my Obak collection I also started researching the players who appeared in the sets. Over the course of several long Wisconsin winters I pored over microfilms of The Sporting News and The Sporting Life from the period several years before to several years after the Obak cards circulated, making prodigious notes on 3x5 file cards for each player in the set.I gave up trying to collect the T212s (that's the catalog number Jefferson Burdick assigned the three sets in the pioneering American Card Catalog in 1939), long ago, and have since sold off all my Obaks, one-by-one, first on eBay, then on the Net 54 baseball card forum. As I was selling each card, I included interesting tidbits about each player from my notes. The bidders seemed to like learning a little bit about these guys on the cards, so I thought I'd now begin sharing their stories here.

How'd he make the majors?

Looking over my index card for Blaine Thomas, I have to assume that a promising pitching career was cut short by injury or illness.

Nicknamed "Smoke," (sometimes called "Baldy") Thomas was a California native, born in 1888. At the age of about 23 he made his professional debut in 1911 with the Victoria Bees of the Class B Northwestern League. He had a 7-11 won-loss record, but somehow earned a trial with the Boston Red Sox, making his big league debut on Aug. 25.

Thomas had two starts with the Red Sox, but pitched only 4.2 innings, giving up three hits, two runs and walking seven batters. His official ML record is 0-0 with an ERA of 0.00, because the two runs he allowed were unearned.

It looks like Thomas returned to the West Coast as Vancouver (NWL) property for 1912, though he never pitched for them in an official game. He went to Sacramento in the Pacific Coast League in mid-season. He got one start with the Sacts, pitching a complete game loss, giving up 12 hits, five runs and three walks.

There's no record of Thomas in the pros after 1912, and he died young, on Aug. 21, 1915 at 27 years of age.

Photo finally obtained for 1928 Greiners Bread

It has probably been about 10 years since we added the 1928 Greiners Bread set to the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards. In all that time we never were able to acquire a photo to use to illustrate the listing. That deficiency has been remedied by collector Greg Zayatz, who provided the scans that appear with this post.

At one time Greg was negotiating with a fellow to purchase a group of these rare cards, but because there was no real-world pricing to reference, a deal was never made, though he did obtain two examples of the cards, Tris Speaker and John McGraw.

As indicated in the SCBC, Greiners Bread cards are a parallel of the 1928 W502 set of 60. The backs indicate they were packaged with loaves of bread and in other pastries. Product stains on Greg's cards seem to verify that. We still don't know where Greiners was located.

Besides adding the photos to the catalog listing, I'm considering deleting the pricing information that has run virtually unchanged since the set was first listed. As best I can recall, there has not been a single example of a Greiners card offered on eBay or in a hobby auction in all the time the set has been listed. That being the case, the prices carried in the 2010 book are likely low-ball and are probably best eliminated unless or until some verified sales can be recorded.

As seen in the back scans below, there is a slight variation in the typography on the two cards. The McGraw card's back (top) has the second, third and fourth lines of each paragraph justified at left. On the Speaker card's back (bottom), the third and fourth lines are not quite justified with the second.

Tales of T212 #15 : Dutch Schafer and Walter Schmidt

Back in the early 1980s I thought I'd combine my interests in minor league baseball and vintage baseball cards by assembling a collection of the Obak cigarette cards that were distributed on the West Coast in 1909, 1910 and 1911.I didn't realize it then, but those cards are so much rarer than most of the contemporary T206 cards from "Back East" that putting together complete sets of the Obak could take decades to accomplish -- and that's if a guy had more money than God to buy the cards when they became available.At about the time I started my Obak collection I also started researching the players who appeared in the sets. Over the course of several long Wisconsin winters I pored over microfilms of The Sporting News and The Sporting Life from the period several years before to several years after the Obak cards circulated, making prodigious notes on 3x5 file cards for each player in the set.I gave up trying to collect the T212s (that's the catalog number Jefferson Burdick assigned the three sets in the pioneering American Card Catalog in 1939), long ago, and have since sold off all my Obaks, one-by-one, first on eBay, then on the Net 54 baseball card forum. As I was selling each card, I included interesting tidbits about each player from my notes. The bidders seemed to like learning a little bit about these guys on the cards, so I thought I'd now begin sharing their stories here.

Walter Schmidt, a "better" little brother

Perhaps it is because his older brother, Charles "Boss" Schmidt had his major league career at the peak of the tobacco-card issuing era and that he played on three American League championship teams in the 1900s, but baseball card collectors generally are more familiar with Boss Schmidt than with his kid brother, Walter.

In actuality, Walter had a longer and slightly better, statistically, career than Charles, even though he never hit more than two home runs in a season (OK, it was the deadball era) and hit over .300 only once.

Walter J. Schmidt was born in Coal Hill, Arkansas, in 1887. He turned pro with Class D Helena of the Arkansas State League at the age of 21 in 1908. He played with Winston-Salem of the Carolina Assn. in 1909, and with Roanoke of the Virginia League in 1910.

In 1911 he moved west to the AA Pacific Coast League, where he was the first-string catcher for the San Francisco Seals through the 1915 season. He had made his baseball card debut the previous year in the Contentnea (T209) and Old Mill (T210) cigarette series, but in 1911 was pictured on his only Obak card.

After the 1915 season, Schmidt was called up to the big leagues, with the Pittsburgh Pirates, with whom he played nine years before moving on to St. Louis for 1925. He appears on a number of contemporary candy and other card issues from that era.

In 1926, Schmidt returned to the PCL as playing-manager for the Mission Bells. He moved behind the plate for Seattle, still in the PCL, for 1927-28, then ended his pro career back with San Francisco as a 42-year-old catcher.

After retiring, Schmidt evidently remained out in California, where he died in 1973.

George "Dutch" Schaefer, I struck out on him

Other than the notation that his name was George, his nickname was Dutch, and that Obak misspelled his name as "Shafer," my notecard for this Vernon Tiger is utterly blank.

Thanks to the SABR Minor League database, however, we can fill the blanks on Dutch's pro career. A pitcher throughout his playing days, he compiled a 93-95 record in 10 minor league seasons.

Schaefer began his pro career with the South Bend Greens of the Central League from 1903-05. He remained in that Class B circuit with Wheeling in 1906 and Terre Haute in 1907-08. Those teams had two of the more unusual nicknames in that era. Wheeling was known as the Stogies, and Terre Haute as the Hottentots.

Schaefer made his way to the West Coast in 1909, pitching for Vernon in 1909-10, and for Los Angeles in 1911.

His last year as a pro was 1912, with the Class D Ludington Mariners of the Michigan League.

Even though he was in the PCL for all three years of Obak cigarette card issues, the 1910 card was his only appearance in T212, and probably his only baseball card.