Gambo and T_Wil1 Photopack

[Patsy Tebeau]

Originally Posted by prewinter

Ernie Hickman pitched for Vincennes in 1883.I found a note about him being relieved by McCauley (Al?), and the article specified that McCauley was a left-handed pitcher. But no handedness was specified for Hickman. This would sugget he was right-handed, IMO. I did some digging on Hickman in connection with his time with the St. Louis Browns Reserve club in 1884, before his time in Kansas City. I found no other references to which hand he pitched with anywhere else.

I think Richard Hershberger would be the man to ask then. He has a giant collection of 19th century clippings so I'm sure he can tell us maybe possibly. As I said I haven't interacted much with people outside of specific projects I worked on nor am I super close with him but I know of him and his collection and have talked to him at least twice ever since he's a part of protoball too.

[tnfoto]

Originally Posted by Patsy Tebeau

Anyways, to continue with another question, George Popplein is listed as missing on the link I got from the signature but the document itself says 2022 (if I downloaded this wrong somehow please tell me) and I seen this image said to be him on a few sites. I think it's from an 1860-something team photo if I recall since I know for a fact I seen the full picture before but don't know where I did.

The last major revision I made to the list was on March 9, 2022, when I added "found" pages for players, manager, and umpires, so that is the date on the file. Since then, it has been a living document which I update as new finds are made, or players are re-added to the missing list.

As for the player identified as Popplein, I have not seen identifications for that photo, and I know there is (or at least was) some question about whether the major league player was George or his brother Joe.

Here is a copy of the full Baltimore Pastimes team photo; I have not seen a copy of this photo with player IDs. While it is labeled 1867, I am also aware that there has been some question as to the specific year the photo was taken, which makes definitive player IDs even tougher.

[Patsy Tebeau]

Originally Posted by tnfoto

The last major revision I made to the list was on March 9, 2022, when I added "found" pages for players, manager, and umpires, so that is the date on the file. Since then, it has been a living document which I update as new finds are made, or players are re-added to the missing list.

As for the player identified as Popplein, I have not seen identifications for that photo, and I know there is (or at least was) some question about whether the major league player was George or his brother Joe.

Here is a copy of the full Baltimore Pastimes team photo; I have not seen a copy of this photo with player IDs. While it is labeled 1867, I am also aware that there has been some question as to the specific year the photo was taken, which makes definitive player IDs even tougher.

I haven't seen any identifications either which was another reason I had to question it. The closest thing I could find was on Craig's "Threads of Our Game" site where he lists suggestions for as to who may be in the photo but nothing definitely listing all the players ID's so I'm not sure where this alleged identification could have come from. I'll look up some of these names to see if there's any grave or family sites or something that I can use to find who they are.

That reminds me I have a few questions about some of the photos I have on my pre-MLB players thread since I got some of them from the web archive sites that are no longer up but fortunately I think I in fact do have some of the links still saved in there. I'll forward them all to Bruce Allardice and get his input since we recently been adding a bunch of new pictures to the protoball archive this past year and also some of them were saved in various archival sites owned by non SABR people and randomly some were on Getty images that were labelled as certain things but there was also that incident where they mislabeled a picture as Levi Meyerle that I saw on there last year so I have a bit of scrutiny for those sites too, as I do for some team player identifications for photos that don't directly have the names written on them. I'll also attempt to go back and see if I can find the sources from where I got each one since I know they all came from somewhere and I'm not just making stuff up and I'll post the links.

EDIT: I have now added the source links for a majority of the photos on that thread. A good majority of the ones I had from the web archived sites matched up with ones that are also apparently posted on Threads of Our Game so I put the links to that site with the images instead for some of them since it's more reliable (hence why the images might be slightly different color shades than the ones on Threads but are still the same one) All the Getty ones are linked too and some of the other images are from Find A Grave and stuff like that.

[Patsy Tebeau]

Are there any pictures of Paddy Livingston from the 1901 season? I been looking for one thanks.

[brobby05]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

I covered the entire Larry Staab saga a decade ago. Takes me back…

(Although further discussion showed that I was wrong about the 1962 photo, but that's off-topic wrt 1970.)

Thanks a million for your previous explanation. Unfortunately, BBall. Ref., doesn't show trades of players who always remain in the Minors, as Staab. That's what threw me off...THANKS a MILLION for contributing!!!

BRobby05

[brobby05]

Originally Posted by DeweyintheHall

The Ranger looks like Jim Umbarger, who was a lefty.

Thanks for gettin' back. I have other Umbarger photos...I'll compare 'em. Thanks a Million!!!

Brobby05

[Chickazoola]

Regarding the Pastime photo - the exact year is unknown.

The issue with the Baltimore guys is they all had brothers who played - so George Popplein is one of six ball playing brothers and the 1873 ID is almost certainly not him - given his advanced age. I lean towards it being Joseph Popplein - who was on the Olympic club in 1872 that morphed into the dreadful Marylands in 1873.

Frank Sellman had an older brother named Arthur Sellman who also played ball.

The McDonald referenced on Craig's page is James McDonnell - and he is the older brother of Marcy McDonnell - who I've recently confirmed is the infamous McDoolan who allowed 24 runs in his only big league appearance on April 15, 1873.

So any work on IDs in the photo needs to be handled with this in mind.

[Chickazoola]

I'll add that one of the challenges with this kind of work (particularly on obscure players) is that the internet spreads misinformation or wrong information and it's hard to suss out what is correct and authoritative even on otherwise excellent sources.

Our process on the Biographical Research Committee is to submit information to Bill Carle and he will give final say and publish in the newsletter. Then that info is added to the respective player page on baseball-reference.

Consider any biographical information on baseball-reference to be authoritative and up-to-date.

If you see any biographical details from other sources that do not match baseball-reference (ie. findagrave, BR Bullpen, Baseball Almanac, Wikipedia etc), it means they are either out-of-date, incorrect, or have not been vetted and proven to be correct.

For photos, the process at the Pictorial Committee is to send to Mark Fimoff and Bill Hickman, with source info. Then the photos end up posted on this board. I maintain my own version of tnfoto's spreadsheet and update with the finds that show up here. Cinemaodyssey has been doing the best work in this field (finding missing player photos) the last few years as I've shifted to biographical research primarily.

I know it's been discussed how best to get photos added to baseball-reference and remove wrong photos, but we've never settled on anything concrete.

I would say that if a photo of a missing player is posted on this board, it has been vetted and is correct - though Cinemaodyssey and a few other folks have been doing a thorough review and have found the odd mistake (or unvetted photo - I'm looking at you John Fox).

So for bio info - trust baseball-reference.com and for photos trust this board.

[Chickazoola]

Originally Posted by Patsy Tebeau

I think Richard Hershberger would be the man to ask then. He has a giant collection of 19th century clippings so I'm sure he can tell us maybe possibly. As I said I haven't interacted much with people outside of specific projects I worked on nor am I super close with him but I know of him and his collection and have talked to him at least twice ever since he's a part of protoball too.

https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/ernie-hickman/

Bill Lamb's SABR bio covers Hickman's career in detail. I'd spent a lot of time on his case a few years ago and his career was fairly brief - roughly 1882 to 1886. I was hoping a photo might have appeared in the paper given the outrageous and tragic nature of his death - but it happened before printed photos were especially common in the paper.

To my mind the best bets would be a Vincennes or East St. Louis paper reprinting an old team photo. Vincennes had some pretty strong semi-pro clubs in the early 1880s, while East St. Louis (along with Peoria) are among my most desired locales for 19th century newspapers to be digitized.

No photo of the Kansas City Unions 1884 exists nor the St. Louis Browns Reserve club of the St. Louis Unions Reserve club and I figure those are much less likely to be around.

[Patsy Tebeau]

Thank you so much for the response Chickazoola. I like how you always respond in a non-passive aggressive manner whenever I have lots of questions and read everything I have to say and what you said there was very helpful and I took a lot away from that to remember for the future, though I had a few things I'd like to ask/add.

Firstly, I trust Baseball Reference a lot and they're one of my top places to look for stats as well as the basic biographical stuff. I did email them about image issues over the years and what I don't understand is why they only changed some but not all of them, such as Jacob Doyle, the Ed Beaven/Ned Connor thing, Bill Tobin, as well as still having not added images to pages like Lou Meyers so I don't really understand the method there. As you said nothing is concrete but they replied every time saying they'd fix them all but still haven't. The John Fox picture is still there too incidentally. I thought most of this stuff was all confirmed to have been debunked by SABR for years now.

Until the Autumn of last year or there about I always kind of assumed this thread was just full of a bunch of people doing their own research as their own thing and just posting it all here and didn't really realize there were so many high-up SABR people here working this (which could be understandable given that we're all just anonymous faceless usernames on a forum quite literally dedicated to discussing a video game). Before that I just used to ask every high-up and even semi-famous members of the 19th century committee who I worked with what they thought since I was like "well these guys must know everything to have gotten the reputations they do" since I didn't really think that everyone would probably have their own fields of specific expertise on different aspects of things and that they were just knowledgeable about everything related to the topic inside and out in every way.

As for Ernie Hickman, I am aware that the papers usually didn't have photographs printed in them at the time so I'd say if you're looking for a depiction of him to probably try to be on the lookout for a drawing.

I don't use Wikipedia much really anymore. I noticed they have SO much wrong and missing information on early baseball players and it'd take too long to go through all of it for me and also most baseball historians seem to prefer to spend their time contributing to projects that are specifically dedicated to the topic of baseball exclusively (while as we know, Wikipedia is a vast catalogue of articles and bios about all sorts of different things in general).

For the most part I have mostly worked with biographical stuff and I am quite knowledgeable with a pretty good portion of it all but I do not claim to be anywhere near an expert yet. I certainly have more knowledge about early baseball than probably most of anyone my age though). I started contributing to the baseball research world even before I was a SABR member with the BR Bullpen. It is alright in the sense that it's run almost entirely by SABR members but it was essentially built from the ground up by a handful of guys who still edit it daily for the past 20 years. Definitely don't count on it as a source if you're looking for references to use for a big project that you intend to publish or something since it's all just a collaborative effort of everyone trying to cover every corner of the game all at once so there is definitely times where I'll spot something incorrect that's been there for years and change it but I still do have a ton of respect for what those guys do.

The reason I mentioned Richard Hershberger was because the biographical stuff that the BA guy included about Hickman and since Hershberger has one of the biggest collections of clippings and he does have a lot that aren't all digitalized yet, he may be able to help if he does by chance happen to have any from the East St. Louis area from the time. Again I am not super close with the guy but it's still a possibility so I emailed him yesterday morning but haven't heard back yet. All the information the BA guy included seems awfully specific so I very highly doubt he'd intentionally try to spread lies on the internet about an obscure baseball player that only a handful of people heard of. I won't rule out the possibility of it being a mistake but I can't say it is a mistake either since it could possibly be true and we don't know yet.

Another thing I want is to follow up on the part about the internet being unreliable and the spread of misinformation. This is a great point you make but I also want to point out that the already difficult task of trying to differentiate fact vs fiction on top of the internet spreading misinformation at times, we also have the fact that many newspapers from long ago were notorious for getting names, spellings, middle initials, teams played for and more wrong. Not only that but also details becoming fuzzier as stories are passed all over the country and interpreted. Imagine it like that telephone game that children play where they whisper something and it goes all around the circle until the last person says it and it's completely different than what the first person said. Some more examples would be like how Fatty Briody was incorrectly reported to have been dead years before he actually died, Win Mercer and the alleged Ladies Day incident, the details of Jim Creighton's death, numerous Rube Waddell tales, Ruth's called shot, and more.

Here is an article that The Sun published after Hickman's death, incorrectly reporting that he had played for the Baltimore Unions:

"St. Louis, Nov. 10 - Ernest Hickman, who in the days of the old Union Association was a well-known baseball player and pitcher for the Baltimore club and later with the Western League, shot his wife in East St. Louis to-day and then committed suicide. Mrs. Hickman is probably fatally wounded. There was a terrible struggle between the husband and wife. The woman was shot in the head, but escaped from the house and entered the house of John Canty next door, where she fell unconscious. From the surroundings it seems that Hickman, after taking his revolver, grappled with his wife and forced her on the bed, shooting her before she could get away from him."


There was other papers who reported incorrect details of his death as well but that's just one example.


Anyways thank you once again I appreciate it greatly.


Oh and one last thing I forgot, apparently the outdated missing player list comes up on this website https://sites.google.com/site/tnfoto...ng-player-list

[rrb77]

Played one game for the 1915 Cincinnati Reds...from the current RMY Auction.

[highflyer16]

Oh and one last thing I forgot, apparently the outdated missing player list comes up on this website https://sites.google.com/site/tnfoto...ng-player-list[/QUOTE]

You mentioned this list of Brace player photos which I found by following your link. Is there a place where these actual photos are saved and accessible?

[tnfoto]

Originally Posted by highflyer16

Oh and one last thing I forgot, apparently the outdated missing player list comes up on this website https://sites.google.com/site/tnfoto...ng-player-list
You mentioned this list of Brace player photos which I found by following your link. Is there a place where these actual photos are saved and accessible?

The Brace photo list is an old copy of George Brace's sales listing. There is no single place where the images on his list can be downloaded, but many of the images are available from resellers on eBay or other online auction sites.

...and I would like to reiterate again that, although the date on the missing list is 2022, the list linked in my signature line and available on the Google site linked above is a living document and remains current.

[Patsy Tebeau]

Originally Posted by tnfoto

The Brace photo list is an old copy of George Brace's sales listing. There is no single place where the images on his list can be downloaded, but many of the images are available from resellers on eBay or other online auction sites.

...and I would like to reiterate again that, although the date on the missing list is 2022, the list linked in my signature line and available on the Google site linked above is a living document and remains current.

I know that the one on the signature is up to date since you told me but I'm saying I found the outdated one on the tnfoto site itself and it still comes up if you go directly to the site itself and it still has the players listed as missing and for proof here is a video of me going on it and highlighting the names directly from the site itself and I'm not sure why it's like that so that's why I figured I'd mention it.

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/pHatFtxZRrI

[tnfoto]

Originally Posted by Patsy Tebeau

I know that the one on the signature is up to date since you told me but I'm saying I found the outdated one on the tnfoto site itself and it still comes up if you go directly to the site itself and it still has the players listed as missing and for proof here is a video of me going on it and highlighting the names directly from the site itself and I'm not sure why it's like that so that's why I figured I'd mention it.

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/pHatFtxZRrI

Thank you for the follow-up. I've updated that link to the correct version.

[UKBaseballfan]

Another image from the latest RMY Auction shows Tommy Clarke from his final season with the 1918 Chicago Cubs. This is the first image I have seen of him with any team other than the Reds.

[DeweyintheHall]

Hello - looking for good images of the following players in Boston garb:

Nathaniel Lowe
Payton Tolle
Kyle Harrison
Nick Burdi
Jovani Moran
Michael Fullmer

Thanks!

[Patsy Tebeau]

Originally Posted by DeweyintheHall

Hello - looking for good images of the following players in Boston garb:

Nathaniel Lowe
Payton Tolle
Kyle Harrison
Nick Burdi
Jovani Moran
Michael Fullmer

Thanks!

Here's some head shots

[Patsy Tebeau]

this one too

[UKBaseballfan]

Another first from the current RMY Auction is another image from the last year of a player's career namely Ferdie Schupp with the 1922 Chicago White Sox.