Posted By:
brian parkerI have dozens of 'Buck Barker' cards, and I seem to remember one of them that has seemingly inaccurate name information. That he messed up on the middle name is not that surprising.
To do a little Barker decoding on the Gleason card, the b82 stands for born in 1882, d61 is died in 1961, 5'6" is his height, 140 is his weight, BosA 2 means he played for the Boston American League team in 1902 (he has a floating 01 above it indicating he also played in 1901 for Boston, etc., and as in the case of the cards I have seen, he lists minor league teams the player performed for as well. Quite often he indicates if the player was released, and sometimes I just can't figure out what the heck he was trying to indicate. As in the Gleason example, the information doesn't seem complete--for example, the Baseball Encyclopedia shows he played for Boston in 1903 as well. But perhaps this info in his system is inferred due to the next entry (Sl A, or St Louis American) that has a 4 next to it. As in this card, there are some seemingly later additions--note the penciled in o4-05. Whether this or any other factoid is accurate or not misses the point--this is just how he recorded his research.
By the way, I received this Barker knowledge from none other than Mark MaCrae, the best dang bb vintage card dealer in the world (and I don't care if that brands me as a member of the pro-Mark faction--one could even go as far as saying that I might be considered a MarkMan district captain).
Brian