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.

[Spike]

(I first posted here on E.T. Cox, but added a scan and expanded on his "Dick Cox" naming issue in a later post in this same thread. Skip ahead a few messages for that one.)

[timn1]

Irv never even played in a single major league game, yet somehow made it into the T207 set to give its collectors fits and nightmares-

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[frohme]

Thanks, Tim!

So many of the others shown here are clearly appropriate for the thread ... but I was wondering when Mr Lewis would make an appearance ... then I guess he never did, did he . Not the most obscure of cards, but from a playing perspective, he's got to be at or near the top (or bottom).

Wonderful example of a pain in many collector's side(s).

--
Mike

[PolarBear]

Cool thread!

Maybe a Karl Spongberg card will turn up someday.

[JollyElm]

If we're including post-war, it's gotta be this guy…

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[Collectorsince62]

1954 Bowman Memo Luna. Started and played in one game. Faced six batters and quickly vanished into obscurity. Two walks, two doubles, two fly outs (one was a sac fly) and a career ERA of 27.00.

Ironically he lost that game to Joe Nuxhall, who had a similarly disastrous debut, exiting his first big league game at the age of fifteen with an ERA of 67.50.