pete hill and the 1904 philadelphia giants redux

Here is a much better image of the photo in this post, from the September 2, 1904, Philadelphia Inquirer:

And here is a detail of Pete Hill:

Comments

[KB]

A nice shot of Charlie 'Tokohama' Grant too.

[Gary Ashwill]

Yeah, heights are a pretty difficult topic. No way Rube Foster was 6'4--in fact, I've got my doubts about him being 6 feet. A number of commonly-cited heights are probably wrong. I should do a post on it...

[JR]

One thing that always strikes me about all these old Philadelphia Giant Photos is the comparison in height between Rube Foster and Sol White. Foster, who has sometimes been listed as tall as 6 feet 4 inches and given weights ranging from 200 to 300 pounds, always seems slightly shorter than White, who is always listed as being 5 foot 9 inches tall and weighing 175 pounds. Of course, there are so many photos of Foster that his actual height can be pretty much pegged at 6 feet tall or slightly under that (maybe 5 foot 11 and some fraction). When he came North from Texas, it appears Foster weighed about 190 but that quickly ballooned upwards and he was pretty much 250 to 300 pounds from 1910 (at the very latest) on. On the other hand, the photographic evidence suggests that White was about 6 feet tall, maybe a fraction more. He was a trim man and probably never weighed over 200 pounds in his life. His weight probably only fluctuated from 175 to 185 during his whole career (and afterwards).