1900s Stereoview sports scenes: #5 "Resting" - #61 "A Sacrifice Hit" (Yale?) - #73 "The Embryo Golfer"

Stereoviews, explained well here, drove most of the card market for 50+ years (1860s-1920s), pushing the bounds for what viewers expected from photography and paper collectibles. They proved so popular, many modern antique stores contain stacks of surviving images, with singles running a few dollars. Three of them caught my eye during this month's trip to Maine, starting with this new-to-me #5 of a bicyclist pausing for a smoke break.

Bicycles and cigarettes each challenged gender expectations, as a set of wheels offered women more independence to travel and tobacco let them indulge in vices while doing so. This rider's flash of black stocking also showed off the strong calves she developed getting around town, which you can imagine stopping traffic of that era!

The other two show baseball and golfing shots from the 150-card 1925 A.C. Co. set (Prewarcards set profile), where "A.C." stands for "American Colortype," a mass-market printer of many paper products. Its #61 "sacrifice" pose seems staged to enhance the 3D impact of bat and ball pointing out toward the viewer and his "Yale" jersey looks like a stage or movie costume.

This multiracial golf scene exaggerates its ball size so much, could that be the same "baseball" sphere from #61? American Colortype operated out of Chicago and I bet its photographer took this outdoor shot at a nearby park.

While I couldn't find it in person, "Modern Mermaid" offers another sports subject from this series, also studio-shot like the baseball pose to make it appear she's reaching out toward you.

American Colortype printed at least one postcard series for Chicago's 1933 "A Century of Progress" expo and put themselves front and center under the title of "Color Progress."

Baseball fans should remember Chicago's 1933 expo as the debut of our modern All-Star Game and breakout year for bubblegum cards. See my profile of Goudey's All-Star premiums for a deeper dive!

Any stereoviews in your own collection? While surviving baseball examples seem few and far between, they cover almost every topic of interest in those days.

1916 (D329) and 1917 (D328) Weil Baking Co Baseball #5, Leon "Red" Ames and Fred Anderson

Louisiana! Home to endless choices for great food, great music, and Joanie on the Pony.

Louisiana! Erstwhile home to one of those food choices, Weil Baking Co., and their paeans to baseball, the 1916 D329 and 1917 D328 sets. You know them from this advertising back.

1916 D329 (1-3/8 x 3, above) is slightly smaller than 1917 D328 (2 x 3-1/4, below), which shows in the amount of white border.

Helpful D328 inscription, more scans on Net54

As often happens with early sets, hobby pioneers like Jefferson Burdick didn't have perfect data resources, so didn't put everything in perfect order. Based on player and team listings, we now know D329 came a year before D328. Their 200-player checklists run alphabetically and share many names in common, but changed enough year-to-year that D328 is Fred Anderson and D329 is Red Ames.

1916 D329 #5, Leon "Red" Ames

1917 D328, Fred Anderson

Most consider D328 and D329 sets as back variations of the 200-card M101-4 and M101-5 sets, as conceived and printed for licensing to regional businesses by Felix Mendelssohn. Felix's print company pitched its blank-back sets to businesses, who added ad info like "H. Weil Baking Co.," etc. Those businesses then sold or gave away singles, lots, and sets to baseball-loving customers as incentives.

Sample of M101-based ad backs

Because of the newspaper's nationwide reach and lasting appeal to baseball fans, The Sporting News is the easiest ad back to find in today's market, so collectors have also cast that umbrella name over these sets. Cards that still have blank backs are properly catalogued M101-4 or M101-5, depending on their checklist and cropping. OldBaseball.com's gallery of M101 backs shows all known examples, which vary greatly in rarity and price premium. For an updated, in-depth look at M101 back scarcity, see "Details of M101-4/5 Backs" at OldBaseball's Reference Library. It's great work.

Office, H. Weil Baking Co.

You can read much about H. Weil Baking Co. and see its set checklists at LouisianaCards.com, which specializes in that state's early 20th century baseball sets.

Value: I've seen low-grade M101s for $10, but Weil Baking runs 2-5x times that because of back scarcity. Weil's not a truly obscure back, fortunately, so you can find an affordable type card with patience.

Fakes / reprints: Many M101-based reprints exist, both as sets and for individual stars. Some eBay sellers are especially shameless about selling reprints without calling them out as reprints. Use caution and look for dealers who carry a breadth of authentic vintage material.

1886 N48 Allen and Ginter's 'Dixie Cigarettes' Lady Baseball Players #5

I recently came across my second 19th century type card, a woman in hazy sepia pretending to catch a ball dangling on a string. While unusual in style, I didn't realize they created un scandal in their time, likely because women weren't socially accepted as "athletic."

Those pants! So form-fitting! Her black stockings and shoes cut quite a figure, and passersby responded, for good or ill, when cigarette sellers hung Allen & Ginter's promotional cabinet cards (below) in their sidewalk windows.

Despite the quality difference, a close look shows both photos are the same woman, who herself appears in most of their 1886 studio photos, occasionally with an "opponent" in matching uniform.

Compare the "cabinet" (above) and cigarette card (below) to see how Allen & Ginter rendered the same picture with varying print quality. Their flashy "real photo" cabinet would draw attention to shop windows and in-pack cards would adapt the image for non-photo printing, this one with a branded "Sub Rosa Cigarettes" foil stamp.

While 19th century women's teams played ball in many cities, it's no accident that Allen & Ginter used these uniformed women to promote Dixie, Sub Rosa, and Virginia Brights, as these were A&G's female-targeted brands. Some kept a blank obverse to save print costs, but others continued their "unexceptionably fine" quality pitch onto card backs.

For some history of a real 1890s women's team, see Baseball History Daily's post sub-titled A Riot in Cuba.

In 1886, Allen & Ginter covered a range of topics on tobacco cards, but when competitor Goodwin & Co. used their Old Judge brand to show off almost every ballplayer of the day starting in 1887 (OJ details at PSA), other brands followed suit and got the base-ball rolling for a nearly uninterrupted run of sports-first sets that continues to the present day.

Value: While more affordable than 19th century male stars of the same vintage, low grade Allen & Ginter cards are always pricy and this #5 cost $130. Larger cabinet cards run much more, especially when the photo presents well.

Fakes / reprints: Haven't seen any fakes or reprints of the women's ballplayers, but they're of an era always vulnerable to counterfeiting. If you're looking for a 19th century type, stick to experienced dealers who know their cards or get something already graded.

1914 T222 Fatima Baseball Players #5, Ed Reulbach, Jimmy Archer, Larry McLean, Oscar Vitt

2015 vintage card forums continue to bustle with gossip and check-ins, as collectors take the temperature of what their market likes on a regular. Buyers (and thus, sellers) appreciate certain teams or players today more than our forebears and there's a continual hunt for discoveries in dusty estates or cigar boxes. Part of advanced collecting is feeling poised on the edge of new cardboard territory, even when "new" means "compared to Abner Doubleday."

I'm ten-plus years into the type collection, but discovered a new-to-me, century-old, Turkish cigarette entry just this week: T222 Fatima Baseball Players, a follow-up to their unnumbered T200 Team Cards. As seen in this excellent OldCardboard.com gallery, four of its players feature a "5" below their name and team, which is good enough to pique my curiosity.

The first #5, Ed Reulbach, would be a special find as one baseball's hardest-to-hit pitchers. He threw one of its finest curves and is the only man to pitch a doubleheader shutout (Sept 26, 1908); much more at his SABR bio.

How difficult is it to capture catcher Jimmy Archer in a single sentence? This Irish-born member of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame could gun down base-stealers while crouched thanks to an industrial soap vat accident that bestowed upon him the proportional powers of a spider shortened and quickened his throwing arm. That's about three different novels in one guy.

While I don't own any of the #5s yet, The Trader Speaks' set gallery showed me what all four guys look like. How do they look? They look warm.

Phew, the sweating! Those dark woolens on Larry McLean speak to season after season of humid afternoon games, dreaming of 21st-century light-knit uniforms and cool evening start times.

(If Larry looks like a tall drink of water in that photo, it's because he stood 6'5", still the tallest catcher in MLB history.)

Like Billy Martin, Ossie Vitt's antagonistic managing style eclipsed his skills with the bat and glove. The public kerfuffle over his handling of Cleveland's Crybabies made the 1940 season especially juicy for fans of tight playoff races.

Despite its claimed "Collection of 100 photographs," collectors agree only 52 baseball players exist. Eight other athletes and cinema stars round out the T222 set at 60 total and there's a full checklist at Sports Collectors Daily.

Not a #5, but T222 Vic Saier is the most gleeful prewar card you'll see today. Omg weeeeeeeeeee!

Value: HOFers Walter Johnson and Grover Cleveland Alexander fetch 4-digit prices, but non-star singles can run under $100. (I hope to find the #5s for below $50.)

Fakes / reprints: Fatima cards are old enough and interesting enough to be a high risk for reprinting. How to detect the bad ones? Fatima cards are real photos, so won't show any dot-printing pattern under magnification. Also, as with most prewar shopping, know your dealer when buying type cards.

Top 5 Cards from the 2014 National Sports Collectors Convention

I spent last weekend in Cleveland's I-X Center, criss-crossing its vast expanse of concrete and carpet in search of collectibles from ages past at "The National" (Sports Collectors Convention).

This annual show attracts serious enthusiast and casual fan alike. Thousands of attendees come to buy all kinds of ephemera, but most of my time was spent looking for things before the 1950s, an easier task given that this was America's biggest annual gathering of sports dealers. 72 hours of walking, talking, and searching yielded many treasures, and here are on-site pictures of my five favorites.

1 : Exhibit Co. Brooklyn Dodgers postcards

Prior to leaving for LA, the Dodgers regularly finished as also-rans to the crosstown New York Yankees, bringing home just one championship in 1955. These machine-vended postcards show three of the squads that fell short in the Series (1949, 1952, 1956) and came relatively cheap considering Brooklyn's popularity with modern collectors. My dad first started following baseball as a Brooklyn fan, so I plan to write notes on each back and send them along as actual postcards.

If you enjoy unusual phases of baseball history, check out The Brooklyn Dodgers in Jersey City, a story of Brooklyn's two seasons of New Jersey "home" games, all played prior to moving west. It tells a story familiar to small-market teams, as Walter O'Malley balanced offers from several suitors while searching for a more popular, enduring home for his Dodgers.

2 : 1933 U.S. Caramel "Famous Athletes" #5, Earl(e) Combs

Candy makers first packaged cards with chewing gum in the early 1930s, a practice that kicked off what we call "bubblegum cards" today. This set, on the other hand, was one of the last from the previous generation, which came with slabs of caramel instead of gum.

Unfortunately, sticky sweets were more challenging than gum to protect from the cardboard, so kids often found their baseball players fouled with a brown crust of sugar when the wax packaging didn't do its job. All that damage meant fewer such cards survive today, so this rarity for my type collection cost a higher-than-average $200. (Its type card profile talks more about the gum/caramel situation.)

3: 1934 Goudey #84, Paul Derringer

The back of Mr. Derringer's card charitably notes that his 7-25 record in 1933 included a "fair bit of bad luck," which might've been better stated as "lousy teammates," a last-place Reds team that won barely 1/3 of its games.

Six years later but still in the same uniform, Paul reversed his fortune with a 25-7 record for the pennant-winning 1939 squad (career stats). Not many pitchers can claim such a turnaround! #84 was also my next-to-last card for this set; all that remains is #37 Lou Gehrig.

Ha ha, no problem! *dies*

4: 1919 W514 #74, Fred Merkle

As I joked to collecting friends, this 1919 Merkle card (of Merkle's Boner fame) has a removable head to allow both a) new hats and b) checking for brains. At a paltry $3, it was an affordable and entertaining purchase.

5: 1954 Red Heart Dog Food, Stan Musial

Already one of the game's finest players, St. Louis fan favorite Stan Musial went "missing" for most collectors in the mid-1950s. He appeared in one 1953 baseball set (Bowman Color) and then disappeared from gum cards for several years before reappearing on a 1958 Topps All-Star card.

In-between those "major" sets, Musial appeared on this limited-run dog food set, one of very few card makers who met his steep contractual asking price. Their 33-player checklist features rich color and attractive portraits, making it a fun set to build, 60 years after Red Heart first offered them by mail.

Stan Musial and Mickey Mantle are the Red Heart set's priciest cards, given the stature of both players. I paid $90 for this one thanks to minor back damage, but it sure looks nice from the front.

Last But Not Least

Lest it sound like Cleveland was all about conspicuous consumption, no trip to The National would be fun without meeting up with over 20 of my trading friends at OBC. We did everything from swap stories to cook BBQ to flip cards on tables, within acres of dealers that we infiltrated like ants at a picnic.

If you know collectors who keep in touch virtually, I highly recommend meeting face-to-face when possible; the more people you have, the more manageable (and enjoyable) an event like this becomes.

1900 Base Ball World's Championship: Pittsburgh Pirates vs Brooklyn Superbas

I recently covered a 1910 "Most Tied Game Ever" between Pittsburgh and Brooklyn, itself a statistical oddity that wouldn't happen in today's no-tie leagues. But that profile omitted their more significant matchup one decade earlier, as Brooklyn traveled to Pittsburgh for one of the post-season "championships" that presaged our modern World Series.

1900 Pirates team photo (sold for $7170 in 2013)

Honus Wagner starred for the Pirates that year (and many after), appearing front and center in this rare team photo. As runner-ups, I suspect Pittsburgh paid a decent "appearance fee" to the National League champion Superbas, anticipating high public interest in seeing the top two teams face off. (NL champs were crowned by W/L record at the time, so this was considered an exhibition.)

1900 Brooklyn Superbas team composite (sold in 2010 for $14,400)

Credit goes to a Retrosheet discussion for finding the original 1900 Pittsburg Press coverage of that series, as Brooklyn won the best-of-5 and its "Punch Bowl" prize.

• Pre-series coverage: Clubs Ready for World's Championship Games
• Pirates Were Outclassed By Champions (Brooklyn wins 5-2)
• Pirates Give The Champions Another Game (Brooklyn wins 4-2, note "champs plunged" sidebar about mid-game betting)
• Phillipe Was Too Clever For Pitcher Howell (Pittsburgh wins 10-0)
• The Punch Bowl Goes To Pitcher Joe M'Ginnity (Brooklyn wins 6-1)

You can find plenty more on pre-World Series champions at Wikipedia, as records stretch all the way back to the 1857 Brooklyn Atlantics, organized baseball's first title winner, who went 7-1-1 in a season just nine games long.

TRIVIA: The 1870 champion "Chicago White Stockings" later became the Cubs and are the sole original NL franchise to keep both name and location since 1876. (Atlanta's Braves, the other founding member, have moved twice since debuting in Boston.)

1917 Boston Store (H801-8) Baseball #5, Fred Anderson

In 1917, New York spitballer Fred Anderson led the National League in ERA (1.44) and WHIP (0.93), great numbers even for the Dead Ball Era. What's more amazing under the circumstances is that those numbers earned him just an 8-8 record, despite the Giants winning 98 times as a team and taking home the pennant.

Five other Giant pitchers reached double-digits in 1917 and "ace" Ferdie Schupp won 21, so how did Fred fare so poorly in comparison? First, he was already a 31 year-old journeyman, so not likely to compete for a regular turn in New York's strong rotation. It's also possible Anderson showed nerves in relief situations that gave HOF manager John McGraw pause when considering who to start every four days; I won't be the guy to label McGraw as a "poor evaluator of skills."

1917 ERA champ Fred Anderson fell back to league-average in 1918, enlisted for WWI duty, and retired to his dental practice following the war. SABR's bio covers his postwar life in more detail, just one example of their breadth of ballplayer research.

That "Boston Store" (a midwestern department store chain) got its name on the back of Fred Anderson's baseball card says more about the growth of baseball marketing than any particular effort on their part. It's one of multiple advertisers that used this 200-player, 1917 set to attract customers, likely by arrangement with Chicago printer Felix Mendelsohn. A family department store ad targeting boys via baseball does reflect the growing success of marketing through children, not a common strategy prior to the 20th century.

Felix Mendelsohn's company debuted this basic design in 1916 via The Sporting News, itself a two-stage release that vintage collectors know as M101-4 and M101-5. Read the PSA profile for lots more about its variations, then see Old Cardboard's comprehensive checklist and gallery of advertiser backs. The complete 1917 Boston Store checklist includes several variations, for a 210-card master set.

By 1917, Boston Stores served several Midwestern metro areas; reader Mark Aubrey ID'd the stated "State, Madison, and Dearborn" as streets bordering their block-sized store in Chicago. If you're wondering what the "boys hosiery" mentioned on card backs looked like, think knickers and knee-socks.

Knee stockings ad by Norman Rockwell, circa 1924

Mendelsohn printed sets from 1915 to at least 1920, and they include Babe Ruth's RC, Jim Thorpe's only MLB card, and a handful of Joe Jacksons. A rare, postcard-sized M101-6 release also contains the Babe's first professed Yankees card, issued just after his 1919 sale from Boston to NY.

If this era's style of card promotion had succeeded, collectors might consider Felix Mendelsohn on par with 1950s Topps for innovation. As it was, he gave early fans lots to enjoy in the WWI era and modern collectors plenty to hunt for today.

Value: My Boston Store type card cost $70 on eBay. Other Boston Store singles go for less, so you can find a better deal if you're not particular about the player or team.

Fakes / reprints: Fakes and full-set reprints exist for The Sporting News sets, so might also exist for this Boston Store set. The aforementioned PSA article includes a section on what to look for on known counterfeits.

1914 Boston Garter Sepia Baseball (H813-3) #5, Hal Chase

The last of three Boston Garter baseball sets released between 1912 and 1914 is an apparent step down from their larger, hand-colored issues, using no more than a sepia photo with small company logo and simulated autograph. I assume they cut budget for this particular promotion, but still wanted something for shop windows during baseball season.

Actual size approx. 3 3/4" x 6 1/4"

Poor autograph cropping along the bottom edge implies Boston Garter reused this photo from another source, such as a team souvenir book, The Sporting News, or Spalding baseball guide. Chase's card doesn't claim a date or specify a team, but the photo's from his lengthy tenure in New York (1905-1913).

No less than Babe Ruth called Hal Chase the best first baseman of all-time and his fielding prowess included aggressive positioning, confident in his quickness and ability to cover ground others couldn't reach (click through for a closer look).

1914's an interesting year to feature Prince Hal on a card, as he made a midseason jump from the White Sox to Buffalo's new, "outlaw" Federal League team. His career stats show the split, half with Chicago and half with the "Buf-Feds." Why Buf-Feds? Prior to the 1920s, news writers and fans of that era often called teams by city and league affiliation (e.g., "Chicago Americans" instead of "Chicago White Sox").

National, American, Federal, and other pro leagues competed fiercely for fans in that era, so tried to craft allegiances along both geographical and organizational lines. 1914's just 10 years after John McGraw refused to let his New York Giants play the American League champs in what would've been the second modern World Series, so an undercurrent of NL vs. AL remained; NL and AL vs. Feds was just the latest permutation on a recurring theme.

Different tag lines ("Garter has won favor..." & "Holds Your Sock...") appeared on different cards, with parts of another shown on this scan of #8 Nap Lajoie.

Nap Lajoie back (trimmed)

So what's at 551 Tremont Street, former home to the George Frost Company and Boston Garter, these days? Studios for our Boston Center for the Arts, a longtime fixture in the arts and performance community. My favorite part of its complex is the Cyclorama building, a structure first built to house a circular painting of Gettysburg. (Today, it hosts a variety of installations and performances.)

Most agree the "best" Boston Garter is 1912's hand-painted set, with their earlier 1914 hand-colored photos as runner-up. Finding this Hal Chase would be a feather in my cap as a collector, but it's not as cool as those predecessors.

Value: Legendary Auctions sold an SGC authenticated Hal Chase for $4200 in 2009. Hall of Famers Nap Lajoie, Tris Speaker, and Christy Mathewson would easily cost $10K and up.

Fakes / reprints: Haven't seen any in the marketplace and it'd be hard to move a fake today, as most things this rare end up professionally graded and sell via auction houses.

1914 Boston Garter Color Baseball (H813-2) #5, Johnny Evers

A century ago, it was customary for all players to wear "high socks," double-covering their lower legs with white under-stockings and athletic stirrups (usually with team colors) under each heel. They then bloused or rolled the pants at knee-level to keep everything in place on the field. (Video: how to wear high socks.)

Some fans make a point of celebrating high socks in the modern game, as most players now wear shoe-top pants for reasons of comfort and style. But it's worth remembering that baseball's socks didn't come from nowhere. The earliest, 19th-century uniforms reflected upper-crust college uniforms of the day, which in turn adopted their bloused pants looks from an imagined New York aristocracy, the Knickerbockers. Decades later, companies like Boston Garter continued to capitalize on this "high socks = high style" affectation. (I like high socks as much as the next guy, while remembering they're a tiny piece of humanity's ongoing fascination with being young, wealthy, and carefree.)

Actual size is 4" x 8 1/4"

Johnny Evers didn't wear garters on the field, as that mid-calf strap would've been painful anytime he slid, but baseball's high socks style does draw your eyes to the right part of the body. Actual garters clipped to socks (under longer pants) and kept them from sliding down as men went about their day.

Boston Garter printed three different placard sets for promotional use at men's clothiers, available by request for retailers themselves. Today's 1914 issue likely entered circulation as supplies waned from 1912's set of 16 players. As a window eye-catcher for passing customers, cards would've been used mostly during baseball season.

Today, we think of checklist numbering as an aid to collectors, but the bolded This is Picture Number 5 tagline probably helped shops know which players to request from Boston Garter. Early hobby catalogs dated this set to late 1913--just late enough to include that season's hitting and fielding stats--but #12 Buck Herzog also mentions his becoming Reds manager for 1914, which would've happened no earlier than his Dec 12, 1913 trade from New York to Cincinnati. Modern collectors agree on 1914; compare checklists and designs at Old Cardboard.

Value: Boston Garters type cards auction for $2000-5000 each in low grade, running much higher for superstars Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson. The 2004 Robert Edwards auction I used for these images closed at $8050 for two cards, #5 John Evers and #12 Charlie Herzog.

Helmar Brewing's "H813-4 Boston Garter"

Fakes / reprints: 21st-century card producers Helmar Brewing created their own version of 1912's Boston Garter set and may expand to 1914's design at a later date. As a modern-made set, make sure not to confuse them with original Boston Garter ad cards. (Helmar creates new, original artwork for their cards, so compare authentic scans to familiarize yourself with the differences.)

1909 "Boston Herald" Baseball Supplements #5, Bill Dahlen (Braves) & Heine Wagner (Red Sox)

I started my first job at age 13, slinging morning papers from a bike seat for Seattle's Post-Intelligencer. It turned over $130 a month, such a princely sum! Enough to keep me flush in candy and baseball cards and what else does a young fan require?

Each morning started at 5am, when a corded bundle of 20-to-30 papers dropped outside my front yard. On most days, a second bundle of advertising inserts kept it company. A carrier's first task: insert those ads into my papers, so sponsors paying the newspaper's bills would get their money's worth. Based on today's promo "cards," which accompanied Boston papers a century ago, it's been a familiar strategy since the dawn of modern baseball.

Issued as two 7.5" x 9.5" pages, joined by center seam (blank back)

Sifting newspaper and morning inserts presented my first moral dilemma. Ditching those ads would've saved the trouble of lugging them around, but eventually get me in hot water, since sponsors paid the paper and the paper paid me. Imagine if those inserts were baseball collectibles, as the Herald offered for their hometown Braves and Red Sox in 1909. Double dilemma! I'd probably still have a stack of them, squirreled away between issues of Boys Life.

The Herald added these paired pages--one player per team--to 12 consecutive Sunday issues, starting June 6th, 1909. That opening date means this #5 came out four weeks later on July 4th. (America! Apple pie! Baseball!) The Sporting News printed their own league-wide take on this design over a four-year period starting the same year, since cataloged for collectors as M101-2 (set gallery). Both rate as rarities in the 21st century and I finally came across one in 2013, ten years after starting the type collection.

Value: I paid $45 for a low-grade single page of Dahlen. Complete versions with both Dahlen and Wagner would run considerably more.

Fakes / reprints: Might be easy to fake with modern technology, but I think these sets are obscure enough that it'd be tough to find enough uneducated buyers.

"Pinch-hitting's Sad Lexicon" (or "Owen to Evers to Chance")

Last night, I did some Baseball-Reference research on my favorite 1980s Seattle SS, Spike Owen. Deep in his batting splits, I came across this position breakdown---and a surprise, one that carried me more than 100 years back in time.

Step one, Spike's splits: what's "other?" They already list DH, PH, and PH as DH. Clicking the career split pointed to 1984, so I checked his game logs.

1984 Topps #413, Spike Owen RC

Spike started almost every day for the 1984 Mariners, appearing just twice as pinch-hitter, including July 21's unusual 9-3 victory over Toronto.

With two runners on base, Toronto brought in Jimmy Key--who spent 1984 as a reliever--and Seattle countered with the switch-hitting Owen. Eight runs later, he batted a second time and ended the inning on a groundout, a rare positional situation noted in their pinch-hitting article.

"If a player acts as a pinch hitter and his team bats around in the inning, he may come to the plate a second time. The second (and subsequent) times he bats in the inning are not considered pinch-hitting appearances."

Hence, Spike batted once as PH and once as "other," as he hadn't replaced Ramos in the field yet. One mystery solved.

Step two, Johnny Evers: in honor of "Baseball's Sad Lexicon," here's the erstwhile Cubs second baseman.

Step three, Frank Chance: the Spike Owen discovery led me to search for other "pinch hitter bats twice in an inning" situations. That, in turn, led to PLAYS THAT PUZZLE, a game story retold by former umpire Billy Evans in Feb, 1934.

excerpt from Reading Eagle, Feb 6, 1934

So here's the conceit.

• Umpire Bill Evans worked the plate in a St. Louis loss to New York
• Manager Frank Chance pinch-hit in the 8th & singled to start a rally
• New York batted around & Chance finished off the comeback one batter early before people realized what happened

Given our dearth of boxscores from Chance's era, it's helpful that the story starts in New York, where Frank only batted in 1913, and Yankee wins over St. Louis on May 19 and 20 seemed our best candidates from B-R's 1913 season results.

The New York Times provides free access to much of their archives, so I combed May 1913 for baseball stories, which produced the promising headline "Browns To Protest Yankees' Victory." So is this the game?

excerpt from New York Times, May 20, 1913

OK, this is substantively the right game, barring embellishments from Billy Evans, who (in 1934) was recalling a 21 year-old contest. Let's check the high points.

• Was Bill Evans umpiring the game? YES, he worked the game, but Hildebrand received and dismissed St. Louis' in-game protests, according to the Times.
• Did Frank Chance start the big rally? NO, he grounded out batting for pitcher Ray Fisher.
• Did Chance bat one batter early the second time around, adding to the 7-run comeback? YES, that's what happened. Claud Derrick should've batted 8th (one spot before Chance) and might've, as Evans claimed, lost track of things in the dugout, or Chance might've run in too early from the third base coaches box.

In short, Frank Chance made history a century ago, pinch-hitting for two different batters in one inning on May 19, 1913, helping his team to a comeback win. An unusual and nuanced story for an unusual and nuanced player.

1914 Cracker Jack #99, Frank Chance

This is first time I've heard of such shenanigans, but baseball's past probably contains more. Add any others you know to the comments!