T207 Mike Donlin Back Information

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Posted By: barrysloate

I was just cataloguing a T207 Mike Donlin- I know, many feel it is the toughest card in the set- and the first sentence of his biography intrigues me. It reads: "One of the greatest hitters the game has ever known."

Now I know Turkey Mike was a fine ballplayer, but is there anybody today who feels he was one of the all-time great hitters? Is he up there with Cobb and Wagner? I found it interesting because how he was perceived in his day differs from how he is viewed today.

No great revelation here, just an observation.

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Barry, I think you're selling Turkey Mike a bit short. Keep in mind that baseball was never his main focus; he unfortunately treated it as a necessary evil as he was more interested in vaudeville, drinking and women. He even sat out a year at the peak of his skills in a contract dispute. Beause of all these things he had a very short peak of a career -- but his peak was extraordinary. He finished in the top 3 in batting in the National League for 5 years of his career and was a lifetime .333 hitter. While he wasn't on the level of Cobb he was still one of the best players in the league -- and perhaps the most flamboyant. His popularity is evidenced by the number of poses in the T206 set: 3, one less than Cobb (and two less than another very talented and popular -- albeit flawed -- player of the times, Hal Chase).

Edited to add: I've lately been focusing my collecting on a handful of unusual and flawed players from the deadball era including Cobb, Chase, Brown, Jennings and Mike Donlin.

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Posted By: barrysloate

I can see you did your homework. But what is interesting to me is how history evolves. In his day, he was one of the greats. But a century later he has fallen out of the public eye, even among baseball historians. I knew he gave up baseball for a failed career in vaudeville, but I never realized how he was perceived in his time.

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

I suppose in our present day, the riches and fame associated with being a baseball star know no peer; back then the pay and perks weren't as good and many players just didn't place the same premium on their playing careers as perhaps they should. Turkey Mike would have been a Hall of Famer had he made baseball his one and only career (and didn't get into all sorts of trouble due to his drinking). As to your point of perceptions changing over time, keep in mind that Babe Ruth, late in his life, said that Hal Chase was the best first baseman he had ever seen. Ask any baseball fan today who Hal Chase is....

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Posted By: Jason L

really didn't think much of Gehrig, did he?

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Posted By: john/z28jd

At the time of that card he was just outside the top 10 all-time in batting and some of the guys ahead of him werent as well known as they are now because stats werent kept and known as closely as they are now. Who knows if the people who made the t207 bios even knew who Dave Orr,Billy Hamilton,Dan Brouthers or Pete Browning were. How many people on this board can claim to know who Jake Stenzel is and this is a vintage board? While the set was being made only Cobb,Wagner and Lajoie had higher averages among active players than his .335(at the time) and the last 2 were just barely ahead of him,while Cobb was still very early in his career at the age of 25.

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

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Posted By: Steve Murray

My contribution to his Vaudeville days:

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Posted By: Paul

The T207 player selection is starting to make sense. Does anyone have a Loudermilk handy? Maybe the T207 writers described him as one of the game's greats too.

My guess is that it's just hyperbole. I have an El Salvadoran card of George Kelly that is similar to the Donlin. My Spanish isn't great, but I believe the back says that his fans consider George Kelly to be the second Babe Ruth. I don't care how deluded his fans were. This never could have been true.

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Posted By: Bob

When someone who has seen as many players as John McGraw did, from the Baltimore Orioles of the 1890's through the Babe, Foxx, Cobb and Gehrig, etc. says that Turkey Mike was one of the greatest hitters he ever saw, I think we can safely assume that Donlin was a great hitter. He might have been the best hitter who ever played the game but we'll never know, just as all the players, including notables like Buck O'Neil, said that had it not been for injuries and his lifestyle that Mickey Mantle could have been THE greatest player who ever played baseball. Like Mantle, opinions on how great Donlin really was will always be shrouded in "what ifs."
As far as the greatest player who ever played, McGraw said it was "the Dutchman" and the greatest pitcher? Matty, although he may have been just a little prejudiced on that one.

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Posted By: leon

His card says he batted .300. 7 times...(pardon the other scan)

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

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Posted By: barrysloate

It's always fascinating to look at history from different perspectives. Collectors know of Donlin as some cardboard figure we look at on one of his many baseball cards. All we really know about him are his stats, and whatever stories have been handed down to us. And I assume there is no footage of his career either.

But the bio on the back of his T207 was written contemporaneous with his career, and whoever wrote it certainly had seen him play. It makes you wonder how many other great players, such as the aforementioned Jake Stenzel (I know how good he was) have simply been forgotten.

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

Mike Donlin was certainly a favorite in New York and that is why the T206 designers printed 3 poses of him.
Whether he was...."One of the greatest hitters the game has ever known."....I'm not to sure.
However, consider his numbers....

1899 - 1912 he batted at an average of .331
The more games he played the better he batted....1905 BA = .356 (150 games)
But, Base Ball was NOT his priority in life....so, we will never know how good he could have been ?


The 5 backs that the 150 Series card of Donlin can be found in. Extremely tough are the HINDU and Sovereign.
It took me almost two years to find them.




Here are some of Donlin's 350/460 cards....his 460 cards are considerably tougher.




Now can someone post a T207 Donlin card ?


TZ

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Posted By: Bobby Binder

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Posted By: Matt

I've always been a fan of the T206 Donlin Seated, as one of the best looking T206 cards. It's almost as good looking as the T207 Becker. Which is a beauty.

Matt

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Posted By: Bruce Babcock

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Posted By: Steve Murray

1906 New York Nationals. Lower right corner.

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Posted By: Rhett Yeakley

Here is another early Mike Donlin item...
-Rhett

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Posted By: Trae R.

His hand looks gargantuan in the seated pose, haha.



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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Well, Trae, why do you think Mabel liked him so much?

Anyone have a Ramley to share out here (or sell me?)

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Posted By: Paul

What year was the Coupon of Donlin with the .300 Batting Average caption issued? I've always assumed it was after he retired (or maybe during 1913 when he was temporarily out of baseball). That would explain why they included the unusual caption instead of a team name.

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

As I noted in above post......Donlin's batting record

"1899 - 1912 he batted at an average of .331
The more games he played the better he batted....1905 BA = .356 (150 games)"

The only time he batted under .300 was in 1902 when he played in only 34 games and batted .294

But, you are correct, this Coupon card of him is a 1913 issue and his BB career had ended. So, per-
haps it was some kind of tribute to him to indicate that he was a career .300+ hitter.

I don't recall seeing other Coupon cards with this added info in their caption....can anyone confirm
or correct this ?

TED Z

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Posted By: Scot Reader

With the passing of a few short generations many of the greatest players of their respective eras are relegated to the dustbin of history. For the most part, the only greats who escape this undeserved fate are those fortunate enough to make it to Cooperstown--which like it or not has become the primary arbiter of baseball greatness. So alas we pay 3X common value for Bobby Wallace but are able to steal the great Turkey Mike for about the same price as Charlie Rhodes (Sorry, Charlie).

If one wants to know who were the most popular players during the T206 era, a good starting point I think is the six superprints. These six subjects depict Chance, Chase (twice), Cobb, Evers and Matty. Somebody at American Tobacco apparently decided that it would make good dollars and cents to supply extra copies of these five players to the smoking public. Another important point, as Ted has already mentioned, is to consider how many different subjects the various players were afforded, three in the case of Turkey Mike (not bad, and the same number as Nap Lajoie whose greatness cannot be disputed).

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Posted By: Bobby Binder

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Posted By: Rhys

The best comparison to Mike Donlin you will find is Bill Lange. He was considered possibly the best player in baseball in the mid-late 19th century as he could run and field better than a few of the other big names. If you saw something from 1898 that said he was the best player in baseball it would seem weird to us today, but it made sense to those that watched him at the time.

Another example is that Ed Barrow during his tenure as Yankees GM while overseeing both Ruth and Gehrig on a daily basis told people openly that the best baseball player he ever saw was Louis Sockalexis. If anyone tried to justify that with simple statistics it wouldn't make a bit of sense.

Rhys Yeakley

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Posted By: leon

There are no other Coupon cards with stats on the front.. like Donlin....

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

Thanks for the confirmation......Mr Donlin is a "unique" dude.

Thanks to his wife, Mabel, and their vaudeville connections, Mike Donlin was the "Talk of the Town" in NYC.
What a life....he had the best of both worlds....when the mood struck, he would strike his bat at a baseball
and was very good at it. Perhaps, if he concentrated at playing BASE BALL he might have achieved numbers
equal to Joe Jackson.

Check his record, the more games he played in a season, the higher his Batting Average. This fact contradicts
all we know about the "mathematics" of hitting a baseball (except if you are Ted Williams).

Thanx again, Leon.

TED Z