[Merkle923]

A most curious wire photo popped up recently. On June 15, 1958 the Cardinals traded Dick Schofield to the Pirates for infielders Gene Freese and Johnny O'Brien. The next day Freese and O'Brien reported to the Cards in Milwaukee and posed for the obligatory photo with manager Fred Hutchinson.

This is the first O'Brien/Cardinals I've ever seen and the only Freese/Cardinals I've encountered is a much-trimmed detail from what might have been an early color Brace. The brevity of their St. Louis careers can't be overstated. Freese played only 62 games with the Cards and did not succeed when they tried to make him a shortstop. O'Brien - of the famed basketball twins from the University of Washington who share a great 1954 Topps card - got into only twelve games and went down to Rochester thereafter. He went in the Rule V draft to the Phillies that fall, and then finished up with the Braves in '59.

But there's an additional weird twist about the third man in the image. The Cardinals fired Hutchinson with a dozen or so games left, and then on the last day of the season sent Freese to Philadelphia for Solly Hemus - whom they promptly named Player-Manager (the last man to try that for a full season in the National League).

I suspect the Freese image Topps used in 1959 is an airbrushed shot of him in a Cardinals' uniform at Wrigley Field but I don't recall now if there were any images of him in that jersey in the late lamented Topps Vault. The shot could be doctored Pittsburgh garb (they didn't adopt the vest style until 1957; on the other hand Topps isn't known to have done any photography at Chicago before 1957). The O'Brien shot with an airbrushed Braves cap is a very tight portrait with no way to tell what it was before their DaVincis got going on it.

Here's the original AP image and isos of Freese and O'Brien, cleaned up a little (the wire shot is blurrier than usual):