T205s: Betcha Bescher's Betcher (Bettger)

[gonzo]

One of my go-to companions for the T205 set is the 1911 Spalding Baseball Guide, which in most cases uses the same photos for its Major League team profiles as are used for the cards.

PDF images of the 1911 Guide are available online for free at the Library of Congress website.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/spalding.00156/

Many of the photos in the Guide never made it onto a card, usually because no card was made for that player. Occasionally though, a player with one photo in the Guide has a different photo in the T205 set. I've written about Ed Walsh before. A few others are Addie Joss, Bugs Raymond, and Ed Sweeney. This seems to happen mostly for the Cycle/Hassan/Piedmont short prints.

Until recently, I hadn't really looked at Bob Bescher. At first glance, the card image looked close enough to the Guide photo, with a bit of the usual T205 artistic tweaks to hat, collar, and shoulders/uniform.




However, I ran across a pair of Paul Thompson photos in a recent Hunt Auctions sale that convinced me that they weren't the same image at all.

This photo has "Bauscher Cinn Nat" hand-written on the back. The player is wearing a Reds uniform. The photo clearly matches the "Bescher" image in the Reds section.





This photo has "Frank Betcher N.Y. Nat" hand-written on the back, though the uniform looks like a Cardinals uniform.
In the Guide, Betcher appears in the Cardinals section. He played 35 games for the Cards in 1910.





I believe that the T205 "Bescher" card actually has the image of Frank Betcher. The T205 looks a lot more like the "Betcher" Cardinals photo than the "Bescher" Reds photo. Here we see everything side-by-side.
I'm not 100% sure that the "Betcher" Guide image is the exact same image as the photo image (maybe the Guide has a slightly different shot with his chin tilted a bit higher, or maybe it's just the fuzziness of the printed image), but I feel good about saying that they look like the same person.





Their names would have been next to each other on a list of 1910 players. I'd guess that someone just grabbed the wrong photo from a file for the baseball card.


Frank Betcher has an interesting story, which I learned thanks to his biography at SABR.org.
https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/559605f6





"Betcher" was an assumed name. His real name was Frank Bettger. He played in the minors for several years after 1910, then went into selling insurance. He toured as a motivational speaker with Dale Carnegie, and he eventually gained fame as the author of a best-selling book, "How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling." Frank's son, Lyle, went into acting and had a nice career as a character actor in movies and TV, including several Westerns.




I have never seen any baseball cards of Frank Betcher/Bettger. His 35 games in 1910 evidently got him into the 1911 Spalding Baseball Guide, but not into any card sets. If the identification written on the photo is correct, then the T205 "Bescher" card is actually the only baseball card with an image of Frank Bettger as a player.


(If anyone is looking to sell a Hindu T205 Bescher, please let me know!)

[RCMcKenzie]

Nice research. Thanks for posting it. Here's the Bescher e-card. Who is it, I wonder?

[brass_rat]

Very nice research post!

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Awesome that stuff like this is still being found. Hard to doubt you nailed it!

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by RCMcKenzie

Nice research. Thanks for posting it. Here's the Bescher e-card. Who is it, I wonder?

I think the Mello-Mint is probably Bescher, not Betcher, since the same image is used for the E101 set dated 1909, before Betcher ever made the majors in 1910.

[TCMA]

Well deduced. Now you understand the fun I had matching the images for the Flickr gallery below. All of these came from the same archive as the photos we're discussing in this thread. In the case of the obscure players it isn't uncommon for the Paul Thompson portrait ID's to be misspelled on the reverse or misidentified altogether .

Also keep in mind that some portraits to appear in the Spalding guide but NOT in the T205 set DID appear on 1911 T332 Helmar stamps:

[TCMA]

Example of an image found in the Spalding guide, NOT in the T205 set but does appear on the Helmar stamps:

[Leon]

Originally Posted by gonzo

One of my go-to companions for the T205 set is the 1911 Spalding Baseball Guide, which in most cases uses the same photos for its Major League team profiles as are used for the cards.

PDF images of the 1911 Guide are available online for free at the Library of Congress website.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/spalding.00156/

Many of the photos in the Guide never made it onto a card, usually because no card was made for that player. Occasionally though, a player with one photo in the Guide has a different photo in the T205 set. I've written about Ed Walsh before. A few others are Addie Joss, Bugs Raymond, and Ed Sweeney. This seems to happen mostly for the Cycle/Hassan/Piedmont short prints.

Until recently, I hadn't really looked at Bob Bescher. At first glance, the card image looked close enough to the Guide photo, with a bit of the usual T205 artistic tweaks to hat, collar, and shoulders/uniform.




However, I ran across a pair of Paul Thompson photos in a recent Hunt Auctions sale that convinced me that they weren't the same image at all.

This photo has "Bauscher Cinn Nat" hand-written on the back. The player is wearing a Reds uniform. The photo clearly matches the "Bescher" image in the Reds section.





This photo has "Frank Betcher N.Y. Nat" hand-written on the back, though the uniform looks like a Cardinals uniform.
In the Guide, Betcher appears in the Cardinals section. He played 35 games for the Cards in 1910.





I believe that the T205 "Bescher" card actually has the image of Frank Betcher. The T205 looks a lot more like the "Betcher" Cardinals photo than the "Bescher" Reds photo. Here we see everything side-by-side.
I'm not 100% sure that the "Betcher" Guide image is the exact same image as the photo image (maybe the Guide has a slightly different shot with his chin tilted a bit higher, or maybe it's just the fuzziness of the printed image), but I feel good about saying that they look like the same person.





Their names would have been next to each other on a list of 1910 players. I'd guess that someone just grabbed the wrong photo from a file for the baseball card.


Frank Betcher has an interesting story, which I learned thanks to his biography at SABR.org.
https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/559605f6





"Betcher" was an assumed name. His real name was Frank Bettger. He played in the minors for several years after 1910, then went into selling insurance. He toured as a motivational speaker with Dale Carnegie, and he eventually gained fame as the author of a best-selling book, "How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling." Frank's son, Lyle, went into acting and had a nice career as a character actor in movies and TV, including several Westerns.




I have never seen any baseball cards of Frank Betcher/Bettger. His 35 games in 1910 evidently got him into the 1911 Spalding Baseball Guide, but not into any card sets. If the identification written on the photo is correct, then the T205 "Bescher" card is actually the only baseball card with an image of Frank Bettger as a player.


(If anyone is looking to sell a Hindu T205 Bescher, please let me know!)

Great stuff. Thanks for sharing the info!

[milkit1]

Great post! I believe this might be the actual Bob Bescher Thompson photo and probably got mislabeled and tossed to the side. I always thought Bescher looked a little like Billy Corrigan personally (second pic attached).

bescher.jpg

bescher 2.jpg

[milkit1]

Also here is a clearer Frank Betcher photo

betcher.jpg

[gonzo]

I missed seeing these photos earlier this month, but saw them today. Very cool - thanks for sharing them!