A tale of a jewel of a 1905 Real Photo Postcard and the immaculate inning

[T206Jim]

Here is an early Real Photo Postcard that has intrigued me.

Ragan-PC-front-web.jpg Ragan-PC-back-web.jpg

Obviously, it has nice silvering, an undivided back that establishes a possible date range of 1901-1907, great clarity, is in great condition and states "Pat" Ragon as the player depicted.

But what is not so obvious is the backstory on the PPPC and the player. A little digging and I quickly found that Don Carlos Patrick Ragan was a ML pitcher who was born in Iowa and pitched in the Majors from 1909 to 1919.

Here are a few of his pictures and cards.

Pat Ragan - Baseball reference.jpg Ragan - Clement card.jpg

Ragan-m101-4-web.jpg Ragan T207.jpg

Ragan photo older.jpg

So a dead ringer it is, but what does the RPPC depict? Well, it is a 1905 postcard showing him a member of the Cornell College (in Iowa) baseball team. How do I know, because I found a copy of Cornell College Royal Purple yearbook and lo and behold what did I find. A story about "Pat" Ragan debuting on the 1906 squad and a team photo of him in same uniform. The previous and the next year's annuals doesn't depict of mention so the 1905 us definitive and coincides with the undivided back timeline.

Cornell-College---Royal-Purple-Yearbook-Ragan-web.jpg Cornell-College---Royal-Purple-Yearbook-web.jpg

So this a 1905 pre-rookie RPPC of the 19 year old future ML pitcher Pat Ragan at Cornell College. His claim to fame is he was the third pitcher in ML history to throw an Immaculate Inning (a 9 pitch three strikeout inning). Ragan did it in theatrical style and bat never met ball as described below in a humorous Boston Globe article.

Ragan-Immaculate.jpg

I don't know how many 1905 individual real photo postcards of future major leaguers exist, but it can't be that many. Do any of you have similar examples?

[slidekellyslide]

Nice research! Love reading about stuff like this.

[h2oya311]

awesome research!!! Nope - you certainly don't see too many inidividual RPPC's of future major leaguers...here's one of mine, although it was produced a handful of years after your example:

c1909 Dave Bancroft while with Superior Blues:

[Bicem]

As per usual, great research Jim! Very cool.

[WillowGrove]

Great research Jim! Thanks for posting.

[T206Jim]

Derek, very nice Bancroft! I may start a new post to try to flush out as many of these individual RPPCs from the Deadball Era as I can.