The T206 Collection: The Players & Their Stories is a great addition to the coffee-table style books about athletes and trading cards.
Reading through this book was like taking a trip back in time. The ballplayers from that time period are really quite different from the people we are accustomed to watching today. One of the major things to stick out to me were some of the team names, specifically the Typewriters. I highly doubt in today’s society you would find a team named after a piece of defunct technology that barely anyone uses. But I guess at the time a typewriter was a high-tech piece of equipment. If they did something like that today, I guess they could have a team named the Iowa iPods 🙂
The ballplayers from this era seemed to be a lot tougher too. They like to bend the rules and try to get away with anything they could. John McGraw was one of the best to try and fool the umpires. A lot of these guys had second jobs when they weren’t playing baseball and many of these jobs were very labor intensive. Today’s players do stuff when they aren’t playing, but whatever they are doing its not the main job that’s paying the bills. Many of the guys in the T206 set needed second jobs just to live.
One thing that really got my attention, was the fact that so many of these players died at a young age because of disease. As tough as this guys were, they couldn’t avoid disease. If they had the medicine we have today, many of them would have had much longer careers. In fact, they would be in a league of their own and couldn’t even compare to the players of today.
This book was very fun to read and laid out well. They did an excellent job of researching all the players. I’m sure some were much harder to dig up information on than others. I couldn’t believe how many players from the T206 set lived and died around where I’m from.
Next I would like to see a coffee-table style book about the Old Judge tobacco cards from the 1880’s.
Update:
There is a book about Old Judge tobacco cards. Its called The Photographic Baseball Cards of Goodwin & Company (1886-1890).
Filed under: Reviews | Tagged: and, collection, players, review, stories, t206, the, their |
Sports Card Info 
Not quite the same as the T206 book, but just as cool…
The Photographic Baseball Cards of Goodwin & Company 1886-1890 by authors Jay Miller, Joe Gonsowski and Richard Masson.
http://www.oldcardboard.com/eNews/2009/enews57/eNews57.htm
(Scroll down a bit for the review)
If you email Lyman or Bret from a link on that page I bet they would know where to obtain a copy.
It’s a bit expensive, but high quality often is!