Thread for player identification in team photos

[prewinter]

The photo is on the seventh page of this forum. After some research, I'm pretty sure the eleven in the photo are as follows.
Six who were with the club all season: Billie Barnie, Edward Nolan, Samuel Dodds, Martin Nolan, M.E. Burke and Herm Dorscher, plus Jimmie Williams (manager).

Joe Simmons (joined the club in June, replacing E. West in center field.
George Strief, who joined the club in July (replacing Mike Mansell?).
George Shaffer, who joined the club in August, replacing James Foran.
E. Callahan, who joined the club in September.

There is a chance E. West is Edward S. West, who was an umpire in the majors for a few games in 1885 and 1887.

E. Callahan came from Brooklyn, and played with Columbus again in 1877. I think his first name is Edward, but it is not the major league pitcher by that name.

Samuel Dodds played with Columbus in 1875, and played with the Unions of Urbana prior to that.

I've got photos for the major leaguers aside from Burke. I'm looking for photos of the minor leaguers.

[cinemaodyssey]

Originally Posted by prewinter

Hogan was sold to Denver (from Leavenwoth) on August 12, 1886. This is how I think they are listed in the caption.

I'm not sure if we had an image of Thomas McAndries for the 1886 Denver team photo. I found one in the 4/22/1889 edition of The Rocky Mountain News. Now to match him up in the team photo...

[prewinter]

Originally Posted by cinemaodyssey

I'm not sure if we had an image of Thomas McAndries for the 1886 Denver team photo. I found one in the 4/22/1889 edition of The Rocky Mountain News. Now to match him up in the team photo...

The three candidates are the players I have identified as Player 2, Player 3 and Player 4, whom I identified as McAndries, Ryan and Mountjoy, respectively, based on my interpretation of the caption. The team photo is posted here agin. Comparisons of McAndries with the three players in question follow. A comparison of Mountjoy and McAndries with Player 2 is presented below.

Updated: Ryan has been positively identified as Player 3, and Joe Straub seems to be Player 4, leaving Player 2 as an option for McAndries.

[prewinter]

Originally Posted by cinemaodyssey

I'm not sure if we had an image of Thomas McAndries for the 1886 Denver team photo. I found one in the 4/22/1889 edition of The Rocky Mountain News. Now to match him up in the team photo...

Here are comparisons of McAndries and Mountjoy with Player 2, after the identifications of Players 3 and 4.

Note: Removed comparisons with Players 3 and 4, as those were matched (see below) through a new team photo.

[prewinter]

Originally Posted by cinemaodyssey

I'm not sure if we had an image of Thomas McAndries for the 1886 Denver team photo. I found one in the 4/22/1889 edition of The Rocky Mountain News. Now to match him up in the team photo...

Here's a sketch of Ryan, from the Rocky Mountain News in May 1885. I'm pretty sure this is the same Ryan who played for Denver in 1886.

They still all look the same to me.

[cinemaodyssey]

I like player #2 for Mountjoy, player #3 for Ryan and player #4 for Straub based on the pre-season team sketch.

[cinemaodyssey]

Here is Joe Straub, from the 7/29/1900 Rocky Mountain News. He was previously a missing player.

[prewinter]

Originally Posted by cinemaodyssey

I like player #2 for Mountjoy, player #3 for Ryan and player #4 for Straub based on the pre-season team sketch.

Here's the pre-team sketch in question, from the Rocky Mountain News of July 29, 1900. It includes at least half of the players from the late season photo. The players in common between the two are O'Neil, Ryan, Straub, Meinke, Silch, Phillips, O'Brien and Tebeau, plus Manager McClintock. Meinke and Straub had no previous points of comparison (as far as I knew). Now they can be matched up between the two.

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Here are the comparisons between the two photos.

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More comparisons

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Still more comparisons

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There are four players "unidentified" in the 1886 photo, as compared to the sketch of the club published later. The caption to the photo (as published in the book on the history of the Western League) suggests these players are Tom McAndries, Tom Hogan, Dan Dugdale, and Billy Mountjoy. Exemplars exist for all but Tom Hogan.

Player 12 is thought to be Dugdale. The caption suggests Hogan is Player 7 (but the caption seems to be unreliable).

Mountjoy and McAndries are compared with Player 2 above. That leaves Player 11 as the other of McAndries and Mountjoy, and I'm not really seeing that.

The assumption (based on the presence of Dugdale and Hogan) is that the photo was taken late in the season, as Hogan did not join the club until August 12. But if the caption is wrong about some of the players, maybe the photo was taken earlier. Silch's uniform changes from one to the other, so it doesn't look like they were taken at the same time.

I can see a resemblance between Hunter and Player 11, which would throw off the timing of the photo entirely. Players 11 and 12 are shown below.

Update: There is a clipping in the Rocky Mountain News on August 24, 1886, about the club as it returned from a trip. The players returning are identified as Dugdale, Hogan, O'Brien, Tebeau, Ryan, Phillips, Straub, Meinke, O'Neil, Lanser, Mountjoy, McAndries and Silch. It explicitly states that Hunter and McMillan did not return with the club. So Lanser and Dugdale overlapped, but Hunter and Dugdale did not.

[cinemaodyssey]

I'm pretty comfortable thinking that Player #2 is McAndries. I also think, even though we don't have any images for comparison, that Player #11 is likely Lanser.

[prewinter]

McAndries should be in the photo, because he was with the club all season (which makes it interesting that he wasn't in the other photo). There were eight players in common between the two photos, plus the manager McClintock and the club president Higgins. That leaves four other players. If Dugdale is in the photo, there are then four possibilities for the remaining three players - McAndries, Mountjoy, Hogan and Lanser. After Silch joined the club in late May, Mounjoy and Lanser joined the club in late June/early July respectively. Dugdale and Hogan joined about the same time in August. So all five would have been on the club at the same time, leaving me wondering who would be left out of the photo.

[cinemaodyssey]

I'm seeing Mountjoy less and less in this photo so I'm not sure he's in there. Dugdale gained a ton of weight between 1886 and the 1894 Washington photo you posted. I have attached an 1885 image of Hunter from his time playing with the Hamilton Clippers and I don't think he is in there either.

[prewinter]

Originally Posted by cinemaodyssey

I'm pretty comfortable thinking that Player #2 is McAndries. I also think, even though we don't have any images for comparison, that Player #11 is likely Lanser.

I've been trying to find another photo of Henry Lanser, and I'll note that Baseball Reference incorrectly has him as Henry Lauser. Lanser played for Danville in 1885, Charleston and Denver in 1886, Akron and Sandusky in 1887, Hamilton in 1889, McKeesport and Erie in 1890, Erie and Elmira in 1891, Montgomery in 1892, and Norfolk in 1894. He was from Cincinnati, and as best I can tell died there in October 1933.

Lauser played for Lebanon PA at least in 1889 and 1892. I think he was from that area.

Update: The player for Lebanon was Luther Louser (b. Oct 1869 per 1900 Census). He was a local who played for clubs from Lebanon for a range of years in the late 1880s and early 1890s. His obituary was published in the Lebanon Daily News on January 14, 1902 (pg 1). He died January 13, 1902 at the age of 34.

[cinemaodyssey]

This one has been around the internet for awhile. I can't remember exactly when I obtained this copy but the identifications where as given:


Top Row, L-R: ?, William Yott, George Fisher, Walt Walker, Bob Parker, Charles Isaacson, Thomas Murray
Bottom Row, L-R: Billy Reid, Tricky Nichols, Benjamin Tuthill (Mgr.), Bob Caruthers, Bob Casey


It was suggested that the unknown player is Cady as he was present early on with the team. He does bear a strong resemblance to the woodcut we have of him.

[tnfoto]

Originally Posted by cinemaodyssey

This one has been around the internet for awhile. I can't remember exactly when I obtained this copy but the identifications where as given:


Top Row, L-R: ?, William Yott, George Fisher, Walt Walker, Bob Parker, Charles Isaacson, Thomas Murray
Bottom Row, L-R: Billy Reid, Tricky Nichols, Benjamin Tuthill (Mgr.), Bob Caruthers, Bob Casey


It was suggested that the unknown player is Cady as he was present early on with the team. He does bear a strong resemblance to the woodcut we have of him.

I have a much higher-quality version of this image, which includes the above IDs in its meta data. The unknown player is listed as "[unidentified] Cain, of".

[prewinter]

Originally Posted by tnfoto

I have a much higher-quality version of this image, which includes the above IDs in its meta data. The unknown player is listed as "[unidentified] Cain, of".

As best I can tell from boxscores, Cady played a single game with the club, on June 1, 1884. Walker's first appearance was June 6, and Yott's last game was June 18. Cady couldn't be in the photo.

I couldn't find a player with anything like Cain in the name, except for McElwain, who didn't show up until late August.

I couldn't find exact dates for Walker's signing and Yott's release, but there is a roughly two week or so overlap between the two when this photo could have been taken, if they are both in it.

Isaacson, Murray, Reid, Nichols, Caruthers and Casey were with the club all season long.

Bob Parker's first game was on May 13. He was a graduate of Brown University, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He was gone at the end of June.

Update: I found a second note on Parker that said he graduated from Dartmouth in 1882 and was studying law in Chicago. He was released July 6.

George Fisher started the season with the club, and his last box score was about the same time as Yott.

The other players with multiple appearances in June were Bart Grether and George Mundinger. Maybe James Donnelly was still with the club, even though the last boxscore I found was June 1? And Wyman Andrus started with the club on June 16, so maybe there was enough overlap with Yott for him to be the final player?

Where do the IDs available come from?

[prewinter]

Originally Posted by prewinter

The other players with multiple appearances in June were Bart Grether and George Mundinger. Maybe James Donnelly was still with the club, even though the last boxscore I found was June 1? And Wyman Andrus started with the club on June 16, so maybe there was enough overlap with Yott for him to be the final player?

Here is a comparison of the unidentified player and George Mundinger, using photos of him previously posted on this site.

There is also a sketch of Andrus from 1887.

I haven't found a photo of Grether.