What if the photo shows Evers, Chance, and someone who looks like but is not Tinker? Below is the famous Paul Thompson Tinker photo, the fella in question, and on the right an older Tinker from a photo in the HOF's collection:
Attachment 523508
I don't think that is Tinker - lots of the facial features look different to me and they don't appear to have the same teeth.
If true, this removes all of the Tinker questions from the equation. And it seems possible that there is some symbolism going on in the photo - if Chance is handing the ball to Evers, this could well be when managerial duties were passed between the two, which would then place this most likely in a Chicago nightclub with the guy in the middle perhaps being the club owner or working for the team.
What this does not resolve is the dating of the stamp proposed by Bob. I can add to that some nice work by Jim Chapman who has a NY stamp study:
https://chapmandeadballcollection.co...tamp-primer-2/
I checked the 1924 San Francisco phonebook - there is no listing for International News Service but there is one for the International News Service, which was at 632 Mission St. - not too far away from the Call Building.
Looking around for information on the New Call Building, I found this:
https://sfpl.org/locations/main-libr...isco-news-call
Specifically, "The combined gift of the morgues from the San Francisco News and Hearst’s San Francisco Call-Bulletin was an estimated 2 million photographs. The San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue represents the working files created and used by the newspapers’ staff between the 1920s and September 1965."
This doesn't clear up why International Film Service would've been typed onto the back of this photo in 1924 - but a typing error is possible, something less likely had this been a stamp - but it does show a Hearst photo archive working out of the building typed on the back of the photo in the 1920s and beyond, so maybe we can't rule out 1924.
Lots of guesses, that's for sure.
