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1900-1910 Pirates Photo Gallery
The Mysterious Case of the Misidentified 1905 Pirates Team Photo!
One of our readers, Tom Ford, contacted me this past week asking for help in identifying the players in a Pirates’ team photo from the early Deadball Era. Tom had seen the same photo featured in two different sources: 150 Years of Baseball, and 20th Century Baseball Chronicle. As I always enjoy the challenge of trying to put names to faces in old baseball photos, I told Tom I’d be glad to help (see featured photo above).
Now here’s where it got interesting. Tom mentioned that none of the players in the photo were unidentified, except for a misidentification of Kitty Bransfield as the player fourth from left in the top row in the 20th Century Baseball Chronicle book. Also, in both books, the photo was captioned as being the 1903 Pirates. When Tom then described to me the players he was able to identify and their position in the photo, it immediately rang a bell. I knew I had worked on this photo years ago and I had a copy in my files. Although I didn’t identify all the players at that time, I remembered I had determined it was a team photo of the 1905 Pirates, and not the 1903 Pirates as Tom’s two books had indicated.
Sure enough, when I pulled the photo out of my files, my memory was correct. What confirmed the 1905 date was the presence of Heine Peitz in the second row next to Honus Wagner and Homer Hillebrand in the front row, third from right. Peitz and Hillebrand didn’t join the team until 1905. So if these identifications were correct, it had to be the 1905 team. Then, with the help of our crack baseball researcher, Don Stokes – who agreed with me about the Peitz and Hillebrand identifications and that this was a photo of the 1905 Pirates – we were able to complete the player identifications.
Don and I have been working together for many years doing player identifications, including hundreds of team photos from all the different eras of baseball. But I have to say this is the first time we had uncovered a major misidentification that, interestingly, appeared in two different baseball sources. How did this misidentification happen? And why did it appear in two separate baseball books? We’ll probably never know.
So, thanks to Tom Ford for requesting my help and to Don Stokes’ for his input. Together, we succeeded in “setting the record straight” on a Pirates team photo with definite historical significance. Hopefully, it will now enter posterity with the proper designation, 1905.
This Pirates team was just two years removed from three straight pennants (1901, ’02, and ’03), including playing in the first World Series against Boston in 1903. It was led by the great Honus Wagner. A few years into the future, they would win the 1909 pennant and World Series. Besides Wagner, another Hall of Famer in the photo above is manager, Fred Clarke.
In case you’re interested, here are the names of the Pirates’ players (now with the correct year!)
1905 Pirates
Top Row, L-R: Ginger Beaumont, Fred Carlish, Sam Leever, Otis Clymer, Charlie Case, George McBride, Vive Lindaman, Goodwin. Middle Row, L-R: Honus Wagner, Heine Peitz, Del Howard, Bill Clancy, Mike Lynch, Deacon Phillippe, Holmes. Front Row: Patsy Flaherty, Claude Richey, Fred Clarke, Homer Hillebrand, Chick Robitaille, Tommy Leach.
Gary Livacari
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