International Man of Mystery

Those who have been reading Wrigley Roster Jenga for a while might be aware of the fact that I work in IT for a local school district.  Though I am not a teacher, I still get a lot of the same treatment and benefits; thus, currently, I'm about halfway into my two-week holiday break.  When I was a kid, there was no more exciting time of year (well, except for summer break) - two weeks of no school and countless festivities.  As an adult, having this bonus time off has it's advantages, even though it's no longer filled with visits to Toys R Us, sledding down Belly Button Hill, and building snowmen with fellow children on the block.  Thus far, I've plowed through my honey-do list, done some side jobs for friends, and the apartment has never been cleaner. 

However, being married to a lovely wife who is not lucky enough to be off with me and being without a large house to take care of or children to worry about, I've discovered that the days can get quite long when eight hours aren't being sopped up by work.  First world problems, am I right?

As such, I've been reviewing parts of my card collection that I've long neglected, including my miscellaneous over-sized, oddball items.  Among the signed photo printouts, Fatheads, newspaper posters, and other items of that ilk, I re-discovered a postcard that I brought home from just the second card show that I ever attended:

That right there is the team photo for one of the greatest baseball teams of all-time, the 1906 Cubs.  Beginning a string of three straight pennants, that Frank Chance-led club set the longstanding record for wins in a season.  Their mind-boggling 116 triumphs was later equaled by the 2001 Seattle Mariners, but has yet to be bested, 111 years later.  However, as dominant as the Cubbies were in the regular season, they were bounced by their crosstown rivals, "the Hitless Wonders" White Sox, in that year's World Series.  The Sox earned that moniker for having the AL's worst cumulative team batting average (.230).  That's baseball for ya.

Anyway, I remember that this item caught my eye as I was preparing to leave the show and I still had a few singles burning a hole in my pocket.  The top-loader that it was displayed in kept me from noticing that it was printed on paper no thicker than your average printer stock and obscured the very obvious "facsimile" notation on the bottom left.  Sadly, I did not notice these traits until I got home.

It's not like I thought I was getting a century-plus year old postcard for four bucks; however, I was hoping for a higher quality modern piece or at least a better quality reprint.  I felt duped and almost immediately stashed it away in a box, to be forgotten, because I was a tad bitter.

However, there was a very specific reason that I purchased this replica in the first place... a reason beyond the fact that it featured one of the best squads ever fielded by my favorite franchise.   Rather, the reason centered around a very specific member of that record-setting team. With a bunch of free time on my hands, it wasn't long before I was hooked back on the mysterious case of an almost transient member of that legendary group.

Behold, Tom Walsh - international man of mystery.

According to the various baseball databases, we know that he was a right-hander who stood 5'11" and weighed 170 lbs.  We also know that he was born on February 28th, 1885 in Davenport, IA, died on March 16th, 1963 in Naples, FL, and was buried back in his hometown.

As far as his performance on the diamond, we know that, at 21, Mr. Walsh appeared in two games for the 1906 Chicago Cubs - August 15th and September 26th.  The youngster caught three innings (making one putout) and notched one plate appearance (striking out) between the two contests - that is the complete summary of his Major League career.  In fact, that is the final word on his entire professional baseball career, altogether.  Tom Walsh never appeared in another pro baseball game, Major or minor or independent, prior to his cameo with the Cubs or for the rest of his life afterwards.  Not a single one.  How bizarre is that?

Information on this incredibly obscure ballplayer is scarce and, if not for this photograph, he might have just been written off as a "ghost player" scoring error.  As a matter of fact, after spending a few hours researching the matter (because this is how I chose to spend my downtime), this team photo is the only time that Walsh appears to have been captured on film - heck, even his Baseball Reference photo is just a cropped version of this same snapshot.  What is his story?  The mystery has long captured my imagination.

The regular catchers for the '06 Cubs - courtesy of Galasso's reprints of the 1911 Turkey Red cabinets

Initially, my theory was that the mid-westerner was a local sandlot or semi-pro player who the Cubs called upon in a pinch.  The theoretical move would have been needed after an injury to one of their two primary catchers, Johnny Kling and Pat Moran... not unlike an Eric Semborski-esque, emergency goalie situation in the NHL.  After all, those three were the only men to don the tools of ignorance for the West Siders that season; thus, any affliction suffered by the regular duo would have left the club in a pickle.  Furthermore, in the rough and tumble, early days of our sport, before farm systems or air travel, this sort of move wasn't all that uncommon - you have to fill that slot somehow.  However, I cannot find the contemporary box scores in order to confirm the absence of either one of the two catchers.  Furthermore, the fact that his two appearances with the clubs are so far spaced out adds another interesting wrinkle to the case.

Another possibility is that Walsh was a sort of hanger-on with the club who was called upon to suit up and rest the starters, similar to the appearances of batting practice pitcher, Hank Grampp, twenty-one years later.  Well on their way to the pennant, the Cubs won each of Tom's appearances by scores of 10-7 and 12-7 respectively and were significantly ahead in the standings in both instances, so it's not as if Chance needed to ride his regulars as part of a tight pennant race.

Or, it could be some other combination of the roles and situations that I've posited above.  I'm truly puzzled as to how we know all about his vitals and stats but know nothing about his background or circumstances, especially in a sport as obsessed with record-keeping and history as baseball.  The bottom line is that I can't find anything concrete about Tom Walsh anywhere on the internet and I'm completely baffled by this fact.

via GIPHY

Tom Walsh's biography

Funny enough, though facts were few and far between, I was able to find someone else as obsessed with Walsh as I currently am.  Of course, this blogging New York Mets fan finds himself wondering whether or not he might be a reincarnated version of the mystery Cub.  It's all done very tongue-in-cheek, but his self-examination uncovers a few bizarre coincidences.  The post is worth a read if you have a few minutes to kill... and, let's be real, if you're reading my ramblings, you have a few minutes to kill.

Switching back to baseball cards for a moment, remember that my ultimate goal in collecting is to obtain at least one card of every single man to ever don a Chicago Cubs uniform.  In the long run, this is a fool's errand - when a franchise's history dates back to the Reconstruction Era, there's going to be some people who slip through the proverbial cracks.  But, with that in mind, isn't it amazing that a man we know so precious little about actually rears his head on a baseball card?  Or does he?

In the end, I'm now left asking myself  (as I did when I originally purchased this facsimile postcard in the winter of 2015), "does this count as a baseball card and should it be considered for inclusion in my CATRC?"

Postcards and reprints are no strangers to my CATRC pages.... far from it.

On the first point, I've long made it known that I consider postcards which feature baseball players to be baseball cards - hell, I even have greeting cards with ball-players on them in my binders.  The bottom line is that any kind of card with a baseball theme is a baseball card, in my eyes; I'm a very inclusive fellow.  Although, I must admit, the fact that it such a cheap, facsimile/reprint on what barely constitutes card stock and hails from origins unknown continues to give me pause.  But, again, it's not like I don't have other reprints residing with my CATRC.

On the latter point, should a team photo be admitted for representation of a singular player?  I don't know - it kind of feels like cheating.  That said, there are several multi-player cards serving the purpose for individual athletes in my pages, some with as many as four or five different people sharing the spotlight; so, is Walsh's situation really all that different?  Plus, this photo even goes to the trouble of individually listing out the members of the team in question.  Finally, as I brought up earlier in this post, this photograph appears to be the only time Tom "Big Foot" Walsh was caught on celluloid.  So, it's not like I have a ton of options here and I want complete as much of my ultimate goal as is humanly possible.  Allowing for this inclusion would bring me that much closer.  Still, this would be the first team photo card to make the ranks.

I suppose there is one further option, besides tracking down a better quality reprint or original printing of the same postcard.  One that would allow me to focus on Walsh and Walsh alone:

There's a Walsh Strat card in this lot image swiped from Ebay, just casually peeking out between a pair of HOF'ers.

Strat-O-Matic has long been the industry standard for table-top baseball simulation.  Admittedly, I do not know how to play the sim, but I do know that it runs through cards... over-sized cards without pictures and that feature specially determined, game-play statistics on the front.  They aren't exactly attractive or particularly collectible outside of their value to the game; but, surprisingly, Tom Walsh makes an uber rare appearance in the team set for the 1906 Cubs.

In a Q and A session hosted by noted game authority, Glen Guzzo, a curious user mentioned the inclusion of the two-game wonder in his newly purchased set, wondering how often such a minor player might make it into the Strat ranks.  Here's what Guzzo had to say about it:

Very, very few players with fewer than 10 at-bats have earned cards. But in Strat-O-Matic’s early days of 20-player teams, occasionally a team would get only 19 cards because there was no one else with enough at-bats or innings pitched worth carding. The 1905 New York Giants, from the same set as your 1906 Cubs, had only 17 players, although 13-at-bat Offa Neal was not carded. In the computer game, however, Strat-O-Matic has been giving ratings to every player with at least 1 at-bat or 1 inning pitched.

So, I suppose tracking down a Walsh Strat stat card is another option for filling his slot - I mean, I do have APBA (another baseball simulation based around stat cards) in my CATRC.  On the flip-side, I *definitely* prefer a photographic card when available and, technically, one is available and a (reprint) copy is already in my possession.

 As of yet, no other option has presented itself for Clyde Beck or Footsie Blair - so, game cards it is.

As of this evening, I think I've finally made my decision, after two years of kicking the can down the road.  That being acknowledged, I'm still curious to hear your opinions.  How do you think I should handle this dilemma?  What would you do in my size 11.5 shoes?  Please illuminate me in the comments section below.

Furthermore, if you have any further information about the international man of mystery better known as Tom Walsh, please feel free to let me know - I'd love to fill in the massive gaps in my knowledge.  I suppose if I REALLY wanted to, I could hop a train downtown and dig through the Chicago Public Library's newspaper archives.  I'm awfully curious, but I'm not THAT curious... at least, not yet.

All of this internal struggle, all of this intensive research, all of this second guessing of my collecting methods... all of this because I had a few days of free time and a Christmas break.  Maybe I need another hobby just to get away from my main hobby?

I told you all I was mildly insane!