St Paul must have really caught fire, because that squad defeated the great Orioles (117-48 and ranked 5th on minor league baseball.com list of greatest teams) in a nine-game series before heading to the left coast
My elementary school library had two books about baseball cards; one was the American Premium Guide to Baseball Cards by Ron Erbe. The co-author had a "complete" set of Old Judge tobacco cards, which most collectors today acknowledge is impossible due to the many pose variations in the set. Despite having so many cards at their disposal, several of the same Old Judge cards are pictured in the catalog more than once. The other book was Sports Cards - Collecting, Trading, and Playing by Margo McLoone and Alice Siegel, with a forward by Pete Rose. Rose was a big deal, as the year I started collecting cards was the season he was in the final stretch of pursuing Ty Cobb's record. On page 51 of this book are 12 Zee-Nut cards from the collection of Jefferson Burdick at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. This was a long-running series. I know that there's at least one Zee-Nut of Joe DiMaggio, but overall, their popularity is obviously hindered because the sets featured minor league players. This might not be a selling point for collectors, but it's a hidden gem for baseball historians.
That’s actually what I love most about the Zee-Nuts. Because they focused on minor leaguers, they ended up preserving the faces of hundreds of players who otherwise would never have appeared on a card at all. For guys who never reached the majors or only had a cup of coffee the Zee-Nut is sometimes the only visual record we have of them as ballplayers.
Enjoyed following you down that rabbit hole. There are so many interesting threads to pull on here, but the one I find most perplexing...How does Baseball-Reference accumulate the data for the individual pitchers of the 1924 Sacramento team (the W/L's totaled 86-109), and not post the team record of 88-112, let alone the standings of the entire PCL for the year? In any event, you got to love Sacramento's unfathomable passion for its minor league team (maybe not it's lack of concern for education). And to Michigan, why Coolidge?
Re Coolidge, the Republican primary elections were important that spring, since Coolidge had been elevated to the presidency by Harding's death in 1923 and hadn't actually faced the voters until then. "Senator Johnson", his leading opponent, was Hiram Johnson of California.
A lot of BRef's old minor league numbers (or lack of them) are puzzling; even the old Spalding or Sporting News Guides that omit stats or categories for limited-use players seem to do better. The mid-50s Who's Who in Baseball books don't seem to have had any trouble filling in the minor league blanks in MLB player careers, and Marshall Wright's minor league compilation books are definitely more complete than BRef's data.
St Paul must have really caught fire, because that squad defeated the great Orioles (117-48 and ranked 5th on minor league baseball.com list of greatest teams) in a nine-game series before heading to the left coast
Last time I looked that list and group of articles was no longer available on the site, but I found it on the wayback https://web.archive.org/web/20121026015854/http://www.milb.com/milb/history/top100.jsp
That list with those Baltimore Orioles teams reminds me of the Monty Python skit, just replace ‘Spam’ with ‘Baltimore Orioles
Ha! That's great. "Have you got anything without Baltimore Orioles on it?"
Orioles-Panthers-Bears-Orioles doesn't have so much Orioles on it
My elementary school library had two books about baseball cards; one was the American Premium Guide to Baseball Cards by Ron Erbe. The co-author had a "complete" set of Old Judge tobacco cards, which most collectors today acknowledge is impossible due to the many pose variations in the set. Despite having so many cards at their disposal, several of the same Old Judge cards are pictured in the catalog more than once. The other book was Sports Cards - Collecting, Trading, and Playing by Margo McLoone and Alice Siegel, with a forward by Pete Rose. Rose was a big deal, as the year I started collecting cards was the season he was in the final stretch of pursuing Ty Cobb's record. On page 51 of this book are 12 Zee-Nut cards from the collection of Jefferson Burdick at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. This was a long-running series. I know that there's at least one Zee-Nut of Joe DiMaggio, but overall, their popularity is obviously hindered because the sets featured minor league players. This might not be a selling point for collectors, but it's a hidden gem for baseball historians.
That’s actually what I love most about the Zee-Nuts. Because they focused on minor leaguers, they ended up preserving the faces of hundreds of players who otherwise would never have appeared on a card at all. For guys who never reached the majors or only had a cup of coffee the Zee-Nut is sometimes the only visual record we have of them as ballplayers.
Enjoyed following you down that rabbit hole. There are so many interesting threads to pull on here, but the one I find most perplexing...How does Baseball-Reference accumulate the data for the individual pitchers of the 1924 Sacramento team (the W/L's totaled 86-109), and not post the team record of 88-112, let alone the standings of the entire PCL for the year? In any event, you got to love Sacramento's unfathomable passion for its minor league team (maybe not it's lack of concern for education). And to Michigan, why Coolidge?
Re Coolidge, the Republican primary elections were important that spring, since Coolidge had been elevated to the presidency by Harding's death in 1923 and hadn't actually faced the voters until then. "Senator Johnson", his leading opponent, was Hiram Johnson of California.
A lot of BRef's old minor league numbers (or lack of them) are puzzling; even the old Spalding or Sporting News Guides that omit stats or categories for limited-use players seem to do better. The mid-50s Who's Who in Baseball books don't seem to have had any trouble filling in the minor league blanks in MLB player careers, and Marshall Wright's minor league compilation books are definitely more complete than BRef's data.