Same Player, Same Pic...Different Team?

[frankhardy]

Originally Posted by akleinb611

That Bob Miller card is even stranger than you realize. The Bob Miller who pitched for Philadelphia never pitched for the Cardinals. There is some evidence that Topps was trying to depict Bob L. Miller, (a righty, in spite of his middle initial) who later played for the 1962 Mets and had a career with the Dodgers, Twins and other teams that lasted well into the Seventies. THAT Bob Miller did play for the Cardinals in 1959, but someone at Topps pulled the photo showing Philadelphia Bob, and also used his stats on the back. Then there's Bob G. Miller, a lefty pitcher who played for Detroit from 1953 to 1956 and had several cards issued by Topps (all using the same photo). By 1959, Bob G. was either in the minors or out of baseball entirely, but he later made a brief comeback - with the 1962 Mets, where he shared the bullpen with Bob L. Casey Stengel distinguished between his two Bob Millers by calling Bob L. "Sherman." You can't make this stuff up.

Being a Cardinals autograph collector, I ran into this several years ago. The Bob Miller on the 1959 Topps card (born 1926, but card says 1927), and the Bob Biller on the 1960 and 1961 Topps cards (born 1939), have very similar autographs. Once I realized they were different players I started studying their autographs. Once I knew the differences, I noticed that the 1961 card had the wrong Bob Miller's signature. He must have not noticed himself....or maybe he was just being nice....or mischievous! I ended up finding the correct signature for the 1961 Topps Bob Miller.

[Chris-Counts]

I've long admired the excellent artwork Bowman did on their 1950-52 cards. When someone got traded, they just painted a new cap and uniform. Topps couldn't achieve this level of artistic quality until the advent of Photoshop.