Quote:
Originally Posted by keonleafs
A couple days ago, Topps Vault posted this pitcher as Bob Nemcek. There is only one Nemcek, listed on BB Ref site, and Robert he is. Taken by the Tigers in the 1971 June Amateur Draft in the 11th Round. Also in 1971, at the tender age of 18, he played his lone year of pro Baseball with the Tigers farm teams in Rookie Ball (Bristol, 10 games, 2-1, 4,66 ERA) and in A level (Batavia, 7 games, 0-0, 4,15 ERA).
Two questions.
Since he was not in training camp in 1971, Topps must have photographed him at the 1972 spring training. I find it hard to believe that he was invited to camp with the kind of stats he had the previous year in very low ball. And he never played pro ball again! The pitcher seems to be 18-19 years old, but....
Secondly, he his wearing the ultra new 1972 Tigers away uni (orange stripes), but...with the olde english D instead of the usual Detroit script??? I have a lot of Tigers pics, TV and others, but never have seen that uni. Also, the white olde english D on his cap seems to be a square patch sewn on it. Anybody have a clue on this??? Thanks.
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Alright, spitballing here. That "D" on the cap looks like how I used to do my transformations before I found the software (and the skill) to do it better. Just cut out a little square of the emblem on someone else's cap and place it over the existing emblem on this player's cap. It's easier than airbrushing. Easy peasy. Of course it looks like crap unless you blend it in. While I can't find any pictures of players at Bristol or Batavia during the time frame, later images of Bristol players show them frequently wearing an Olde English "D" uni and an Olde English "B" hat. The Olde English "B" unis they also wore (in the 80s and 90s) only have the one spike on the left, not two. But, from what I've seen of the Batavia unis, they always went with the single letter rather than a "Batavia" or "Trojans" script (at least until they became the "Muckdogs").
Anyway, because I can, here's an image of
Vache Bahadurian from 1969 in full Detroit regalia, taken at Bristol's Randolph Field. Obviously, Bob's picture wasn't taken there (as evidenced by the palm trees on his picture). But he might still have been waring a "B" cap or perhaps an Instructional League cap (B-R has no FIL stats for '71-'72, but the Tigers did have a team there at the time). The picture of Vache is from an article written by Tim Hayes in the
Bristol Herald Courier. There are no additional credits on the photo itself.