In honor of football season, how about sharing your vintage football items (let's stick with memorabilia rather than cards since we're on the memorabilia side over here).
I'll start it off with an photo I picked up a few weeks ago.
I recently came across what appeared to be a pretty neat image of a football team albeit in rough condition. As you can see, the picture was fairly large and was in a frame and had considerable dirt/mold within it.
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As I began to clean it up, it became apparent that this was the Homestead Library Athletic Club team of 1900. This was one of the earliest professional teams in existence and in spite of the odd sounding name, they were the best football team in the world and were considered the national champions in 1900 and 1901, going undefeated and unscored on in 1900. This team played at Pittsburgh’s Exposition Park and was loaded with All-Americans. The team was paid by the Pittsburgh Pirates’ minority owner William Chase Temple. Players were paid between $50 - $100 per game plus expenses.
As I further cleaned it, I was thrilled to notice that the players were identified along with their prior college affiliation or hometown. The players included Art Poe, wearing a very early harness helmet (one of the six Poe brothers to play football and brother of the Poe that is in the Mayo Cut Plug set) and also Dave Fultz, kneeling far right, who played major league baseball (see 1902 Sporting Life Cabinet set and 1903 E107 Breisch Williams set).
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Player’s identification are: Top Row – Pete Overfield (Univ. of Penn.), Arthur “Artie” Miller (Carlisle Indian School), Farr (Homestead, PA), Church (Princeton), Bemus Pierce (Carlisle), Hibbard (Univ. of Cin.), Brooke (Penn.), McNulty (Notre Dame), Winstein (Woods Run, PA), Lawich? (Braddock, PA), Bottom Row – John Hall (Yale), Arthur “Art” Poe (Princeton), John Ashley “Daff” Gammons (Brown), Lewis (Bucknell), Willis “Little” Richardson (Brown), George Young (Cornell), Otto Wagenhurst (Univ. of Penn.), David Lewis Fultz (Brown).
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The team folded after the 1901 season. Reportedly the 1900 and 1901 seasons were two of the rainiest seasons on record which prevented much of the fan base from attending (notice how muddy the lower half of the player’s uniforms are in the photo which was taken on the field of play). However, many of the players joined the Pittsburgh Star’s team in 1902 (Christy Mathewson played on this team) which was part of the first professional football league, the NFL.
Rob M