Agate Type

Philadelphia Giants, 1902

When identifying people in old photographs, few resources are more helpful than finding the photograph printed in a newspaper with all the people in it identified.   

This photo, from Sol White’s Official Base Ball Guide (1907), is the earliest known image of White’s own Philadelphia Giants, dating from their first season in 1902:

In his book White didn’t identify anybody in the picture, though White himself and several others are readily recognizable. Luckily the photo was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on October 5, 1902, with a full caption telling us who’s who:

The photo shows two Hall of Famers (White and Frank Grant), as well as several other fairly well-known players, plus the team’s co-organizers, H. Walter Schlichter and Harry A. Smith. Schlichter was a sportswriter for the Philadelphia Item, editor of Sol White’s guide, and a boxing referee (he appears in a Thomas Eakins painting called “Taking the Count”).  Harry Smith was also a sportswriter, for the Philadelphia Tribune (more about him in a minute).

There are many photos of Sol White, but only a handful of Frank Grant, so this picture is important in that regard.

But three of the players are especially obscure, thus especially interesting.

First, there’s “Smith,” the Giants’ center fielder, sitting on the far left next to Frank Grant. In box scores and game stories he appears as “H. Smith” and (at least once) Harry Smith. This is a little confusing, since the team’s co-organizer, who appears in the photo in a suit (seated in the middle row, second from right), was also named Harry Smith. While it’s possible that the player was getting confused with the sportswriter, I’d say the simplest explanation is that there were two Harry Smiths associated with the team.

There are other possibilities, of course. For one thing, I can’t reliably track Harry Smith the player after his time with the Philadelphia Giants. Maybe he was really some other, known player named Smith? William T. “Big Bill” Smith, an outfielder/catcher/first baseman, was around at this time, but he was (as far as I can tell) playing for the Cuban X Giants in 1902. Moreover, I don’t think photos of Big Bill match the one of Smith here:

According to a profile of Big Bill Smith published in the Indianapolis Ledger in 1915, “In 1902 Smith weighed 230 pounds and could hit according to his weight.” The guy in the 1902 photo does not look like he weighed 230 pounds.

There was also an outfielder named William Smith who captained the Chicago Unions in the late 1890s. He could also be Big Bill or Harry, but again, I need to do a lot more research to figure out if this is a possibility.

Second, there’s William Edgar Farrell (standing in the back, on the far left), usually known as Edgar Farrell. His time with the 1902 Philadelphia Giants was his sole appearance with what you might call a “top flight” black professional club, but he continued to play baseball in the Philadelphia area for another 15 years or so. More than a decade later he served as captain of the Blue Ribbon Base Ball Club of Germantown in Philadelphia (the same district where Roy Campanella was born).

(Philadelphia Tribune, February 21, 1914, p. 7)

Third, and last, there’s the player identified as “Day,” in front on the left. I originally thought him to be Eddie Day, a Reading, Pa., native who also played for the Cuban Giants…but the guy with the ’02 Philly Giants clearly doesn’t match the Eddie Day who appears in 1902 and 1903 Cuban Giants photos.

For the moment I don’t know anything else about Day of the Philadelphia Giants (no first name, nothing), just that he’s apparently not Eddie Day.

1904 philadelphia giants

Just wanted to point out this beautiful image of the 1904 Philadelphia Giants, which John Thorn has posted at least a couple of times (most recently in this entry on Sol White).

To my knowledge, the photograph was first published in the September 2, 1904, issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer (though one wonders if it didn’t first appear in the pages of The Item, the paper that employed the Giants’ owner Walter Schlichter).

Since when I originally noticed this photograph much of my interest came from its status as the earliest known photograph of Pete Hill, here’s a closeup of him:

And here are a few more, starting with Rube Foster:

Bill Monroe:

Johnny Hill:

 

Charlie Grant:

 

Will Horn:

 

Andrew Payne:

the negro league you’ve never heard of: the national association 1907-1909

The first “Negro league,” which I would define as a professional circuit explicitly dedicated to clubs staffed by black players, was the League of Colored Base Ball Clubs, or the National Colored League, of 1887. The NCL was as national in its range as the major leagues of the time, its six clubs including Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Pittsburgh, Lousville, and Baltimore. This proved to be way too ambitious, considering the limited resources available; the league collapsed within a couple of weeks, leaving players stranded in faraway cities.  It was fully twenty years before another “Negro league” would emerge, with a very different scope and somewhat reduced ambition: the National Association of Colored Base Ball Clubs of the United States and Cuba.  Virtually nothing has ever been written about this league, which seems to have lasted no fewer than three seasons, from 1907 to 1909.

Let me begin, though, the year before this Negro league got started, with a different league that was in important ways its predecessor.  In 1906 William Freihofer, who owned a chain of bakeries in the Philadelphia area as well as a white semi-pro club called the Philadelphia Professionals, organized the International League of Independent Professional Base Ball Clubs, which in its original form consisted of two black clubs, two Cuban clubs, and one white team:

(Sporting Life, April 14, 1906, p. 17)

A quick rundown on the International League’s original teams:

•Cuban X Giants, owned/managed by E. B. Lamar;
•Philadelphia Quaker Giants, owned by Jess and Eddie McMahon, managers of Olympic Field in Manhattan;
•Cuban Stars of Havana (originally called the Cuban Stars of Santiago, though this was quickly dropped), owned by Manuel Camps, a Cuban immigrant and Brooklyn cigar manufacturer, and booked by E. B. Lamar;
•Havana Stars (also called the Havana Club or just the Havanas), owned/managed by Alfredo Pastor, a Cuban baseball official, and booked by E. B. Lamar;
•Philadelphia Professionals, owned by Freihofer himself and managed by John A. O’Rourke, the league’s secretary/treasurer.

Freihofer also provided a “handsome silver cup” to be awarded to the league champions at season’s end:

(Sol White’s Official Base Ball Guide, p. 114)

In some ways, the International League looks to us more like a tournament than what we would consider a league. The original plans were for a five-team league to play an 8-game “season,” with every club playing every other club twice.  Needless to say, the league clubs played a number of games against each other that didn’t count officially in the standings, and played many, many games against non-league opponents.  The Philadelphia Giants, for example, played a total of 145 games in 1906, but would only play five official International League contests.

The race for the Freihofer Cup claimed several casualties.  The Havana Stars were the first to succumb, falling apart in early June, with several of the players being poached by other International clubs.  Their place in the league was at first to be taken by the Wilmington (Del.) Giants, a team led by the old Cuban Giants veteran George L. Williams, but league secretary John A. O’Rourke eventually decided to admit the Riverton-Palmyra (N.J.) Athletic Club, another white team, instead (Philadelphia Inquirer, June 24, 1906, Sports, p. 2).

In July the Quaker Giants and the Cuban Stars both failed to make scheduled appearances and were dropped from the league (though they continued to exist), and their places (and records) were taken over by the Philadelphia Giants and the Wilmington Giants (“New Teams in International League,” Trenton Evening Times, July 24, 1906, p. 11). The Philly Giants, inheriting the Quakers’ 3-0 record, were immediately installed as favorites to win the Freihofer Cup (“What the Future Greats Are Doing,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 5, 1906, Sports, p. 2).

On Labor Day, September 3, playing in the Philadelphia Athletics’ Columbia Park, the Philadelphia Giants, behind Rube Foster, defeated the Cuban X-Giants and Harry Buckner 3 to 2, clinching the International League championship.  Here are the final standings:

(Philadelphia Inquirer, September 10, 1906, p. 10)

The Inquirer was pretty optimistic about the circuit’s future prospects: “The league despite, several drawbacks, weathered all the storms of the first year and the prospects of a bigger and stronger circuit next summer are indeed encouraging” (ibid.).

As I said, I wouldn’t consider the 1906 International to be a “Negro league,” strictly speaking, due to the presence of the two white teams. But it was the predecessor to a genuine Negro league.

 

(Trenton Evening Times, October 29, 1906, p. 11)

I used to think that the National Association was an outright continuation of the International League, just with the white clubs dropped; but I no longer think that was the case, given the name change, the absence of Freihofer and his Cup, and the fact that the new league had little to do with Philadelphia (nearly all of the 1907 games between its clubs were played in New York and New Jersey).  The key alliance was now between Walter Schlichter of the Philadelphia Giants and Nat C. Strong of New York, who was consolidating his control of independent baseball on the east coast.

Some of the men behind the National Association: Walter Schlichter, John Connor, Nat Strong, John Bright.

Standings for the 1907 National Association were published somewhat more erratically than for the 1906 International League, though they did appear every so often. In the end the Philadelphia Giants were again the champions.

 

(Trenton Evening Times, October 14, 1907, p. 11)

I haven’t found final published standings for the 1907 National Association, but here’s how each club fared against the other teams in the league:

              Philadelphia Giants: 13-7-0
              Cuban Giants:         5-5-1
              Royal Giants:        10-14-1
              Cuban Stars:          2-4-0

The league still existed in 1908, its membership unchanged:

(Indianapolis Freeman, March 21, 1908, p. 6)

It’s unclear exactly when they clinched it, but on September 28 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle asserted that the Royal Giants had already won “the championship for 1908 of the colored League of the United States.”

Here are the records of each club against other league members in 1908.  The Royal Giants seemed to have deserved that championship:

                Royal Giants:        19-10-1
                Philadelphia Giants: 16-15-0
                Cuban Giants:         6-12-1
                Cuban Stars:          3-7-0

The National Association lasted through the 1909 season:

(Sporting Life, December 19, 1908, p. 8)

There was very little coverage of the 1909 pennant race. According to Nat Strong, the Cuban Stars and Royal Giants were engaged in a series that would decide the championship in late September and early October, and the Royal Giants had won the first two games:

(Indianapolis Freeman, December 18, 1909, p. 7)

I’ve been able to find three games between the Cuban Stars and Royal Giants in September.  The Royal Giants beat the Cubans 5 to 3 on September 6 at the Bronx Oval, then won again 2 to 1 on September 12 at Meyerrose Park in Brooklyn.  The Cuban Stars turned the tables for a 4 to 2 win at the Bronx Oval on September 21. In a later letter to the Freeman (December 18, 1909), Strong said the Royal Giants had won the championship, and maintained that “the usual colored championship series will be played during the season of 1910.”

Again, the records of each club against the other National Association clubs for 1909:

                   Royal Giants:        9-3
                Cuban Stars:         8-5
                Philadelphia Giants: 6-12
                Cuban Giants:        0-3

Despite Strong’s confident assertions, in 1910 there’s no hint of the National Association of Colored Base Ball Clubs of the United States and Cuba.  If I had to guess I’d say that it was done in by 1) the decline of the Genuine Cuban Giants; 2) the Cuban Stars’ increasing involvement in the Midwestern game as they spent more and more time in and around Chicago and less on the east coast; and 3) Nat Strong’s realization of the money he could make pitting his Royal Giants against white semipro and town teams in both New York City and upstate New York.  

In fact, Strong would remain for years the biggest obstacle to organizing the eastern blackball teams, and there would be no eastern league until he was persuaded to lend his (half-hearted) support to the ECL in 1923. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Giants, the first truly great African American baseball team, were strangled by the lack of good opponents in the east, which caused them to take long, expensive, and ultimately unsustainable western jaunts in pursuit of better paydays.

As far as I can tell two players appeared in both the first Negro league (the National Colored League of 1887) and the second one (the National Association of 1907-1909): Sol White, 19-year-old third baseman for the 1887 Pittsburg Keystones, and veteran player-manager for the champion 1907 Philadelphia Giants; and John Nelson, who pitched for both the 1887 New York Gorhams and the 1908 Genuine Cuban Giants.

Old school: John Nelson and Sol White

 

UPDATE 2/6/2014 Just realized I forgot the 1886 Southern League of Colored Base Ballists, which certainly qualifies as a Negro league per the above definition.

charles thomas, branch rickey, & the philadelphia giants

James Tate, in the comments to this post, raises the possibility that “Thomas,” seated to the left of Walter Schlichter in the above photo of the 1910 Philadelphia Giants, is in fact Charles Thomas, Ohio Wesleyan’s first African American athlete, and lifelong friend of Branch Rickey.  Thomas was a key figure—actually, the key figure—in Rickey’s own personal explanation of his commitment to integration. 

Ohio Wesleyan baseball team, 1903.  Charles Thomas is in the middle row, third from left; Branch Rickey is standing on the far left.

Ohio Wesleyan baseball team, 1904.  Branch Rickey is again standing on the left, with Charles Thomas is standing in the middle.

When Rickey took over as manager of Ohio Wesleyan’s football and baseball teams in 1903, he often had to deal with the problem of finding accommodations for Thomas on the road, as whites-only hotels wouldn’t allow him to stay.  Frequently the solution was for Rickey to set up a cot in his own room for Thomas.  One of these occasions, in South Bend, Indiana, before a 1904 game with Notre Dame, would haunt Rickey for years.

Here’s how A. S. “Doc” Young, longtime Chicago Defender sportswriter, told the story in Ebony magazine in 1968:

“Up in Rickey’s room, Thomas—a strong, 220-pound athlete—broke down.  Crushed by this bout with Jim Crow, he sat on the cot, his huge body hunched forward, and stared despairingly at his hands.

“ ‘It’s these,’ he said repeatedly.  ‘They’re black.  If it weren’t for my skin, I wouldn’t be any different from anybody.  If only my hands were white.’

“Charlie Thomas pulled violently at first one hand and then the other, trying, it seemed, to tear the black skin from himself.  Rickey, watching, attempted to ease Thomas’ mental burden.  ‘Tommy’, Rickey said, ‘the day will come when they won’t have to be white’.”  (Ebony, November 1968, p. 156)

Back when we first posted the 1910 and 1911 Negro league seasons to the Seamheads Negro Leagues Database, I had considered the possibility that Thomas, an outfielder and pitcher for the Philadelphia Giants in those seasons, was in fact Charlie Thomas of Ohio Wesleyan.  It made all kinds of sense.  For one thing, Thomas was supposed to have played briefly for the Philadelphia Giants several years earlier, during the summer of 1905.  For another, the Giants’ player in 1910 and 1911 was called “C. Thomas” in box scores.

But in the end, I hesitated to make this identification, for two reasons:

1) Charles Thomas’s biography doesn’t seem to quite match.  According to this excellent Black College Nines page on Thomas, upon graduating from dental school in 1908 he opened a practice in St. Louis.  It seemed unlikely (though not impossible, of course) that he would have abandoned an already-established practice to go back east to play professional baseball for a couple of years.  Moreover, C. Thomas joined the Philadelphia Giants not during their Midwestern tour early in the season, but in July 1910, after they had returned to the east coast.

2) After looking at the photos pretty intensively, I decided that, although there is a superficial resemblance, I couldn’t say that they were of the same person.

Left: C. Thomas, 1910 Philadelphia Giants
Right: Charles L. Thomas, Ohio Wesleyan

In the end I have no problem IDing all the Charles Thomas photos as the same person, but I stop short when I look at the guy in the 1910 Philly Giants photo. While I’m not a facial recognition expert, I think if you compare their noses, eyes, and eyebrows it’s pretty clear that C. Thomas and Charles Thomas are not the same person.

Here are several more images of Charles L. Thomas, from (in order) the Black College Nines site, Ohio Wesleyan (via the New York Times), the Cleveland Call and Post (1941), and Black College Nines again:

(Thomas is in the middle.)

philadelphia giants, 1909

A couple of years ago I posted this photograph, which had been wrongly labeled as the 1906 Philadelphia Giants, and was claimed to picture Rube Foster and Sol White.

As I pointed out at the time, in fact this is the 1909 Philadelphia Giants, and Foster and White aren’t in the photograph, though it does include John Henry Lloyd and Spot Poles, among others.

Bill Mullins has found the photograph published in the New York Press on September 12, 1909, with the players identified:

The caption might be a little hard to read, so here’s what it says:

“Top row, left to right—Poles, centre field; Fisher, pitcher; Emory, pitcher; Hayman, pitcher; Lloyd, shortstop; McClellan, pitcher.  Second row—Duncan, left field; Petway, catcher; H. Walter Schlichter, manager; Wilson (captain), first base; Patton, right field and pitcher.  Bottom row—Francis, third base; James, second base.”

These would be the first confirmed images of pitchers Jerry Fisher, John Emory, Sy “Bugs” Hayman, and James Patton.  Very cool, and thanks to Bill.

the georgia rabbit

I’ve long been puzzled by two facts of Walter Ball’s biography: he’s commonly listed in reference books as “George Walter Ball,” and given the nickname “The Georgia Rabbit.”  Both are problematic:

1) I have never seen a contemporary reference to Walter Ball as anything but Walter Ball, and the few official documents I’ve been able to find (passenger lists, census records, draft cards, death certificate) give his name as…Walter Ball.  His World War I draft card gives him a middle name, Thomas.   So, as far as I can tell, his name was Walter Thomas Ball—no George involved.

2) And all sources agree that he was born in Detroit, Michigan, had moved to Minnesota by the time he was 14, and played his entire professional career for Northern teams—so why would he have been called “The Georgia Rabbit”?

After looking into it a little, I found a single reference that I believe explains both of these problems.  It’s a passage from Sol White’s History of Colored Base Ball, originally published in 1907, toward the very end of the original text (p. 118 in the Jerry Malloy edition):

Here White appears to be calling Ball “George Washington Ball” and giving him the nickname “Georgia Rabbit.”  Okay, fair enough—Sol White, after all, was there, and has to be considered the leading authority on this era, plus the book was published right in the middle of Ball’s career. 

Except for one curious fact: White calls him George Washington Ball, but historians have apparently chosen to interpret “Washington” as a mistake for “Walter.”

Many years later, in 1931, White wrote a piece for the New York Age about the Philadelphia Giants in which he discussed roster changes forced in 1907 by the defection of the team’s biggest star, Rube Foster:

(New York Age, January 3, 1931, p. 6)

So White is saying here that he signed “the Georgia Rabbit” for the Philadelphia Giants.  There’s only one problem with this: Walter Ball never pitched for the Philadelphia Giants.  He did suit up for the 1906 Philadelphia Quaker Giants, a team organized by the McMahon brothers to try to cut in on the Philly Giants’ market, but he never did play for Sol White & Walter Schlichter’s club.  As for 1907, Ball split the year between two Midwestern teams, the new St. Paul Gophers and the Chicago Leland Giants, and spent 1908 with the Lelands and the Minneapolis Keystones.

Also reprinted in Malloy’s edition of the History of Colored Base Ball is an interview of Sol White by Floyd Calvin, which was originally published in the Pittsburgh Courier, March 12, 1927.  Much of it consists of a chronological account of White’s career.  Here’s the entry for 1907 (from the original version in the Courier), again about new players on the Philadelphia Giants that year:

(Pittsburgh Courier, March 12, 1927, p. A4)

Taken literally, this seems to imply that White signed a pitcher named George Washington (not “George Washington Ball”) along with someone else called “G. A. Rabbit.” 

No one named “Rabbit” ever appeared in a Philadelphia Giants’ box score, to my knowledge.  There was, on the other hand, a pitcher named George Washington on Sol White’s team in 1907 and 1908.  He didn’t pitch against any black professional teams in 1907, so he doesn’t appear in the Seamheads DB for that year, but he was with the Giants—for example:

(Philadelphia Inquirer, June 14, 1907)

It’s my opinion that “George Walter Ball, the Georgia Rabbit” was born as a result of a lost comma in Sol White’s book. 

White was listing pitchers by last name until he got to George Washington, not as well-known as the others.  What he meant to write was “McClellan, Bowman, Foster, Holland, Merritt, George Washington (Georgia Rabbit), Ball, Wilson, Davis and Buckner,” but by some mishap the comma after “(Georgia Rabbit)” was omitted, making it look like he was talking about somebody named George Washington Ball, nicknamed Georgia Rabbit.  This was, by pure coincidence, compounded by another punctuation mishap 20 years later, the next time (as far as I know) White talked publicly about Washington.  Floyd Calvin misread White’s or his own notes, and where White meant to say “George Washington (pitcher, Georgia Rabbit),” Calvin misunderstood it as a separate player named “G. A. Rabbit.”

I don’t know very much about George Washington, but what little I do know includes two facts that seem very relevant here.  1) Unlike Walter Ball, George Washington was from Georgia—he was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1874.  And 2), Washington may also have played for the baseball team organized by the Rabbit’s Foot Company, a famous minstrel troupe.

So in the end there’s no reason to think that Walter Ball’s first name was George or that he was ever called “the Georgia Rabbit,” and several good reasons to think that another player’s first name and nickname have been accidentally attached to Ball.

UPDATE See also this 1926 interview with Rube Foster where he confirms the separate existence of a Philadelphia Giants player named “Georgia Rabbit Washington.”

1902 philadelphia giants

Here’s a photo of the 1902 Philadelphia Giants, the first edition of that soon-to-be great ballclub, from the October 5, 1902, Philadelphia Inquirer.  It was later printed in Sol White’s History of Colored Base Ball (1907), but without the players identified. Perhaps most importantly, that’s the veteran Frank Grant, second from left in the middle row.

You can click to enlarge the team photo, but in case the print is still too small, here are the players:

Top row, L to R: Farrell, 1B; John Nelson, 3B; Sol White, SS & captain; Kid Carter, P; Warrick, P.

Second row: W. Smith, CF; Frank Grant, 2B; H.W. Schlichter, manager; William Bell, P; Harry Smith, asst. manager; Andrew Payne, LF.

Front: Day, RF; Pete Burns, C.

Pete Burns, of course, is one of the people who blew the whistle on Charlie Grant’s attempt to pass as Indian.

 

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:

earliest known photo of pete hill?

In honor of the dedication of Pete Hill’s historical marker in Buena, Virginia, here’s a photo of the 1904 Philadelphia Giants I ran across recently.  It was printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer on September 2, 1904, on the occasion of Rube Foster’s great victory over the Cuban X-Giants in the three-game series they played for the “Colored Championship of the World.”  (Foster’s 18 strikeouts, by the way, could be considered the all-time “Negro league” record, beating Satchel Paige’s 17 strikeouts against the Cuban Stars on April 29, 1929, though I suppose it depends on how you define “Negro league record.”)

The evidence suggests that 1904 was Pete Hill’s first full season in big-time black baseball (he had played for the Cuban X-Giants in Havana the previous fall), so this could be the earliest photo of Pete that we have.  Pete is in the middle row, second from left.

(Apologies again for the poor quality of this microfilmed-then-scanned image; I’m sure, or at least I hope, that actual prints of this picture exist somewhere.  I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen one, though.)

There’s another photo of the Philadelphia Giants floating around that’s commonly dated to 1904.  It can’t be, though, as Grant Johnson (top row, far left—the only player not identified in the handwriting on the photo) did not join the Giants until 1905—he was with the Cuban X-Giants in 1904.  In fact, Johnson only played for the Philadelphia Giants in 1905 (and for a short time in Cuba in the fall of 1907), so this photo certainly dates from 1905 rather than 1904.

UPDATE 6/16/2011  Here is a much better image of the 1904 photo.

the wrong philadelphia giants

I recently ran across this photo, supposedly of the 1906 Philadelphia Giants, which was auctioned off back in 2006:


Here’s the conclusion of the catalog description:

“As for the detailing of the pictured elements, we identify [white sportswriter and Giants owner Walter] Schlichter, and Sol White likely sits to his immediate left. Rube Foster, we believe is the tallest player standing in the back row. The caption, ‘Season 1906’, was not applied to this print but, instead, to the original. This photo is a splendid rendering of a highly successful independent, Black baseball team that only anticipated the coming of the Negro Leagues - and one showcasing the Hall of Famer, Rube Foster, at the peak of his playing career.”

Despite the authoritative prose, nearly everything said here is completely wrong.  True, it is the Philadelphia Giants, and that is Schlichter at the center of the photo.  But neither Rube Foster nor Sol White is in the photo, which is readily apparent if you’ve ever seen any photos of them.  Another star of the ’06 Giants, Pete Hill, is missing, too. 

It’s not, however, a photo of complete nobodies.  Standing at the far right is Danny McClellan, who played with the Giants through the 1910 season.  Standing at the far left is Spottswood Poles, which tells us something.  Poles joined the Philadelphia Giants in mid-season 1909, and played the 1910 season with the club, before jumping to the Lincoln Giants in 1911.  So we’ve narrowed down the possible years to 1909 and 1910, when McClellan and Poles were on the Philadelphia Giants.

As it happens, I’ve located another photograph that shows a Giants team of a very similar vintage, this time with most of the players identified.

Poles and McClellan are seated to the right of Schlichter.  Standing second from left is Bill “Bonehead” Pierce, who played for the Philadelphia Giants only in 1910.  Next to him, standing in the center, is Jesse Barber, who played with the Giants in 1909 and 1910 before defecting to the American Giants in 1911.  Next is Lee Wade and then Fisher (no first name known), both of whom pitched for the Giants in 1909 and 1910 only.

I can’t match everybody in the two photos for certain, with the exception of Schlichter, Poles,  McClellan, Fisher (standing second from left in the first photo), and the two guys in front, who I believe are the same in both pictures: on the left Bill Francis and on the right William “Knucks” James, both of whom left the Giants after the 1910 season.

But there are a couple of interesting differences I’ve left for last.  Consider first the guy sitting to the left of Schlichter in the original photo. 

I believe he’s Bruce Petway:

Petway played for the Philadelphia Giants in 1908 and 1909.

Next consider the guy standing second from right (between the false Rube Foster and Danny McClellan).

Look anything like this guy?

 

The regular shortstop on the 1909 Philadelphia Giants was none other than John Henry Lloyd.  In 1910 he was signed away by Rube Foster for his Leland Giants, and I don’t believe he is in the second photo.

So my conclusion is that the original photo above was mistakenly identified as the 1906 Philadelphia Giants.  In fact, it’s really the 1909 Philadelphia Giants.  The second photo, meanwhile, shows the 1910 Giants (note that Knucks James is still wearing his uniform from the previous year).

The first photo absolutely does not include Rube Foster, who was touted by the seller as the photograph’s main selling feature, or Sol White, who at the time of the auction (October 19, 2006) had been Foster’s companion in the Hall of Fame for only a few months.  But the photo does show the Hall of Famer John Henry Lloyd, plus noted players Spot Poles and Bruce Petway. So maybe it was worth the price it went for.

Incidentally, here are the actual 1906 Philadelphia Giants, from their manager Sol White’s book:

 

UPDATE 1/13/2013 Bill Mullins has found the 1909 Philadelphia Giants photo published in the New York Press (September 12, 1909), with a caption identifying all the players.