The Most Obscure Carded Baseball Player in History

[philliesphan]

If we include minor league players, my understanding is that there's still a good dozen+ folks who appear on Zeenut cards for whom proper identification to this day is lacking. I imagine Rhett, Mark and a few others would be subject matter experts in this arena.

Here's someone who made it to the majors, but really ought never to have:

Marvin Harold "Red" Smith

Red's cup of coffee came with the Philadelphia A's in 1925, as a 25-year old. He played primarily at shortstop, though he put in two games at third in his very short tenure. A defensive replacement -- he played in twenty games in total, but only managed sixteen plate appearances. He had a grand total of four singles, scoring one time and also a single RBI to his name. He walked twice and struck out five times. Thus ended Red's MLB career.

Of course, Red only played fifty games in the PCL, in this single season with the Oakland Oaks, as pictured on this Zeenut card. In those fifty games, he hit less than .200, and was in the B league in Evansville by 1924. It certainly makes it curious as to how and why he got to MLB if he couldn't cut it in PCL and was relegated to a B league before making the jump to the Bigs? He did come back to the Portland Beavers in 1926 -- although I can't easily find stats to support what he did with them there.