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08-25-2021, 12:23 AM | #1 |
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Thread for player identification in team photos
This thread is intended to promote identification of players from team photos, for which no identifications are available. My hope is that after a photo is posted with a preliminary set of identifications, others will chime in with images of potential matches. At the end, if it all works out, we will have successfully identified the players in the photo, or at least narrowed the pool down significantly.
I would suggest that if you want to post a photo for identification, you title the post and related posts with the team and year so they can all be found in one search. I would also request that if you post a photo of a known player, you try to provide a reference for the photo. If you have some research relevant to identifying the players, try to post a reference to that as well. I'm going to start with the 1891 Green Bay team photo, discussed in a previous thread. https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...4046&page=1756 Teams discussed so far: 1891 Green Bay (Page 1 with final IDs) 1883 St. Louis Browns (Page 1 with final IDs) 1890 Portland (Page 1 with final IDs) 1884 Terre Haute (may be 1882 Terre Haute, in which case everything is wrong, or maybe 1883?) (Page 2) 1889 Kansas City (Page 2 with final IDs) 1886 Atlanta (Page 3 with final IDs) 1887 Minnesota (Page 3 with final IDs) 1887 Des Moines (Page 4 with final IDs) 1886 Leadville Blues (2 photos) (Page 4) 1892 Atlanta Firecrackers (Page 4 with final IDs) 1886 Denver (Page 5 with IDs and Page 9, updated, with second photo) 1889 York Hayseeds (Page 6) 1890 Syracuse (Page 6 with final IDs) 1888 Davenport (Central Interstate League) (Page 6) 1914 St. Louis Federals (Page 7 with IDs and source identified) 1876(?) Columbus Buckeyes (Page 7) 1875 Fordham Rose Hills (Page 7) 1884 Union Pacific (from Omaha) (Page 7 with IDs) 1890 Portland finalized (Page 8) 1883 Council Bluffs (near Omaha) (Page 8 with IDs) 1886 Oshkosh (Page 8) 1883 Fort Wayne (Page 8) 1882 Guelph (Page 8 with IDs) 1886 Denver, second photo (Page 9 with IDs) 1884 Minneapolis (Page 9) 1895 Forth Worth (Page 10) 1883/1884 Terre Haute (Page 10) 1893 Troy (Page 10) 1896 Detroit Tigers (Page 11 with IDs) 1887 Philadelphia Phillies (Page 11 with IDs) Final IDs means there is general agreement as to who is depicted and where. Last edited by prewinter; 11-25-2023 at 11:09 PM. |
08-25-2021, 12:30 AM | #2 |
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1891 Green Bay Team Photo
Here's the 1891 Green Bay Team Photo. The photo was published in an unidentified newspaper in February, 2000, although some of the names were incorrect. The Green Bay Press-Gazette reported on August 4, 1891, that the owner of the Green Bay club purchased the entire Terre Haute club to transfer the players to Green Bay, releasing the entire old club (except Ernie Beam). The players coming from Terre Haute were manager George Brackett, Terrien, Stephens, Flood, Breitenstein, Kapple, Wright, Pabst, Hemp and McMillan. Those players, plus Beam (and minus Breitenstein, who signed with St. Louis instead) are the ones depicted in the team photo.
The latest matches are shown below. Added 9/26/2021: Based on the caption of the photo as published in 2000, the players are Back row: Joe Kappel, Ed Pabst, Thomas Flood, Pat Wright Middle row: Ed Fusselbeck, Edmund Terrien, George Brackett, George McMillan, Ernie Beam Front row: Frank Spill, Ben Stephens, Ducky Hemp Last edited by prewinter; 09-26-2021 at 12:48 PM. |
08-25-2021, 12:32 AM | #3 |
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1891 Green Bay Team Photo
Back row, left to right. Thomas Flood is identified through elimination, as there are known photos of everyone else that can be matched to someone else. According to a blurb in the Galveston Daily News (February 12, 1888) he was 21 years old that year and was 6 feet in height.
Updated with comparison of Flood with his Old Judge card. Last edited by prewinter; 10-20-2021 at 10:00 PM. |
08-25-2021, 12:40 AM | #4 |
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1891 Green Bay Team Photo
Next three. Previously Fusselbeck was identified as the back row on the right, but Pat Wright is a better match. Fusselbeck and Terrein are best matches; I could see them switched. Fusselbeck was left out of the identification in the newspaper photo. Updated to reflect final assignments by swapping Fusselbeck before Terrein. Last edited by prewinter; 10-19-2021 at 08:47 PM. |
08-25-2021, 12:50 AM | #5 |
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1891 Green Bay Team Photo
The last three in the middle row are pretty much set by the caption in the newspaper. The Brackett sketch comes from the Sporting Life (I think). Last edited by prewinter; 08-25-2021 at 08:36 AM. |
08-25-2021, 12:51 AM | #6 |
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1891 Green Bay Team Photo
The final three, from the front row. I'm basing the Spill match on the left ear and the nose. Last edited by prewinter; 08-25-2021 at 08:36 AM. |
08-25-2021, 08:09 PM | #7 |
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I prefer Terrien as the player 2nd from left in the middle row. He's even tilting his head the same way as his exemplar.
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08-26-2021, 01:42 AM | #8 |
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I could see flipping Terrien and Fusselback. I'm hoping to get some feedback from the Neville Public Museum to see if they can provide a scan of the back of their photo (which I assume has the names provided with the photo in the February 2000 article).
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08-26-2021, 02:39 AM | #9 |
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1883 St. Louis Browns
I've seen this photo around for years without any player identification. There is a set of proposed identifications at Threads of Our Game (https://www.threadsofourgame.com/1883-st-louis/). Recently, I came across an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch written by Benjamin Hochman on March 15, 2016 (https://www.stltoday.com/sports/colu...1ff6e58d4.html), including the photo below, with player identifications. The photo is beaten up far more than any version I've seen previously, so I'm guessing it is not the 'standard' print that shows up all over the web.
After finding this article, I dug around some more and found that the photo was previously printed by the Post-Dispatch on October 26, 1931 (pg 4B/19), with the same player identification, except that Chris Von der Ahe is listed in place of Ted Sullivan. There are obviously some problems with the caption. The photo is most likely from 1883, not 1884, because of the 8 clubs listed on the score board. (The American Association had 12 teams in 1884.) Tip O'Neill did not play for the Browns in 1883, and Mullane didn't play for the Browns in 1884. With mistakes like that, I might be inclined to think these were names written well after the fact by someone who didn't quite remember things clearly. But then there is the most interesting name, from the original 1931 caption: Nat Evans. I've done a lot of reading about the St. Louis Browns of the 1880s, and I've never heard of a Nat Evans. So I did some digging. There is a Nat Evans in Baseball-Reference, born in 1876 in Russia, died in New York in 1935, but with no record of ever playing baseball. It turns out, he was a gambler connected with the Black Sox scandal (https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/nat-evans/). Even more interesting, his family moved to St. Louis in 1883. Why would someone in 1931 put that name with a photo of the Browns? That makes me suspect these names came from the photo itself, perhaps written on the back close to the time of the photo. Based on box scores from the games against Louisville in May, the Browns roster at the time consisted of Bill Gleason, Latham, Nicol, Comiskey, Mullane, Strief, Dolan, Cuthbert, McGinnis, Deasley, and Overbeck. That's 11 players. Jack Gleason was released to Louisville right before the series stated (he played for Louisville all three games). Overbeck arrived from Peoria in time for the first game, and Cuthbert showed up in time to play in games two and three. Mullane and McGinnis were the pitchers. I could see Overbeck being misread as O'Neill in 1931, and Strief as Street. The 1883 Browns had Ted Sullivan as the manager and Tom Sullivan as a utility player in May of 1883. Those two names side-by-side could cause confusion (resulting in the photo caption missing a name). Two Sullivan's brings the total to 13, and Nat Evans makes 14, the number of people in the photo. So, now I'm setting out to understand this photo better. Based on known photos of the Browns from that time (and there are plenty of them!), the published caption is probably right about Comiskey, Deasley, Bill Gleason, McGinnis, Mullane (unambiguously setting the date in 1883), Nicol, and Latham. All of these players were with the Browns all season. The time frame for the photo is probably during a series between Louisville and the Browns in St. Louis in late May, although the clubs played again in St. Louis in July. The gentleman in the coat is most likely Chris Von der Ahe (the club owner) or Ted Sullivan (the club manager - more likely IMO). This leaves the second and fourth players standing in on the the back row (numbered from left to right), the third player sitting (between McGinnis and Mullane), the last player sitting (who probably is George Streif, who was also with the Browns all season), the second player on the left in the front row (Cuthbert and Dolan look fairly similar), and Mr. Nat Evans. I'll post exemplars tomorrow. |
08-26-2021, 09:18 AM | #10 |
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1883 St. Louis Browns
First set of comparisons. Matches are based on the caption in the paper, with Overbeck for O'Neill and Strief for Street. The exemplar photos are from Baseball-Ref, for the most part. Tom Sullivan comes from a cabinet card ofthe 1879 Dubuque Rabbits.
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08-26-2021, 09:21 AM | #11 |
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1883 St. Louis Browns
Second set.
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08-26-2021, 09:21 AM | #12 |
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1883 St. Louis Browns
Next set.
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08-26-2021, 09:23 AM | #13 |
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Fourth set.
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08-26-2021, 09:27 AM | #14 |
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1883 St. Louis Browns
Final comparison is the photo of Nat Evans from his SABR biography and the player labeled as Nat Evans. Given the age difference (if they are the same person), it is hard to draw any conclusions. If it were Nat Evans in the Browns photo, he would be roughly 17 years old.
So I flunked remedial math... Nat Evans would have been 7 in 1883, not 17. So not Nate Evans, Russian gambler. Last edited by prewinter; 08-26-2021 at 06:48 PM. |
08-26-2021, 09:29 AM | #15 |
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1883 St. Louis Browns
One last note is that I do not have a photo of Ted Sullivan, the Browns manager in 1883 (in May; he left the club later in the year) that is a good comparison. There are plenty of photos of Chirs Von der Ahe, and I honestly can't say if the man in the suit is him or not. My gut says that Sullivan would be more likely to be in the picture than Von der Ahe.
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08-26-2021, 10:41 AM | #16 | |
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Quote:
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08-26-2021, 08:19 PM | #17 |
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08-27-2021, 11:40 PM | #18 |
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I'm traveling currently so I am unable to search but it is in one of the mystery photo supplement newsletters.
https://sabr.org/research/pictorial-...ee-newsletters |
08-29-2021, 11:34 AM | #19 | |
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Quote:
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08-30-2021, 07:01 PM | #20 |
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1890 Portland team photo
The 1890 Portland team photo was discussed previously in a different thread:
(https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...nd#post4266974) I'm bringing the discussion here and summarizing some of the findings across the various posts. There are two key matches that set who is likely in the photo: the manager, pictured in street clothes, and the player third from the left in the back row. The former appears to be Henry Harris, who came onto the club in mid-May, replacing Dick Dwyer. Harris left the club towards the end of August. The latter appears to be Bill Hassamaer, whose first game was June 19. That sets the date for the photo sometime between these two dates. A comparison of the possible managers is shown below. The nose and the eye (IMO) are a better match with Harris. (The photo of Dwyer, on the left, is from a team photo of the Omaha Union Pacific club of late 1884 or early 1885. It should be noted that the cast of possible players in the Portland team photo changes almost completely if the manager pictured is Dwyer.) The match for Hassamaer is from Baseball-Reference. Added 9/23/2021: Summarizing the matches below and previously, the proposed identifications are Back row: Harry Hulin, Unidentified 3, Bill Hassamaer, George Rhue, Jiggs Parrott, Bill Whitrock Middle row: Unidentified 1, Unidentified 2, Henry Harris (Manager), Tom Parrott, Harry O'Day Front Row: Frank Buchtel, Pat Whitaker Candidates for remaining unknown players: David Levy, Jack G. Munday, Gus Land, Joseph Schachern Updated 9/2/2022: A photo of Jack Munday is available on pg 6 of this thread. I think it is a match for the second person in the back row (Unidentified 3). Gus Land was 22 at the time of the photo (pg 8). I think he is Unidentified 2, the second person in the second row (next to the manager). That puts Joe Schachern as the first person sitting on the bench in the second row (Unidentified 1). Last edited by prewinter; 01-24-2023 at 08:39 AM. |
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