The Beckett Blog

While not exactly a hobby-shaking discovery, I unearthed a small tidbit that T210 collectors will find interesting.
Like any other trip back home, this past trip I spent a day in the library scanning through yards of microfilm.
Oh, I know what you are saying. Man, this guy is like the Indiana Jones of cards, one adventure after another. What could be more exciting than staring at film of 98-year-old newspapers? Its not even the original paper. Its a 30-plus year old picture on a piece of film of a 98-year-old paper. Now thats what drives the women wild.
I usually have a legal pad I carry with me with info I need to find. Most is baseball related and some is card related. I may pick up a piece of info here or there filling in a hole or two.
This trip one of my quests was to find the first name of a player pictured on a T210 card I have.
We list a few first names along with the players last name in our pricing database for T210’s. Many of these are last name only. Since the T210 set is a minor league set, many of the players never made it to the majors and have been forgotten by history.
Even small town heroes that never made good in the big show have been largely forgotten over the years.
I know the names of all the other T210’s I have in my collection but the newest card I picked up listed as Miller, Chattanooga was a mystery to me.
I knew Mr. Miller had a name and a story to tell. Problem was he wasn’t talking.
As I scanned through the 1910 editions of the Chattanooga Times newspaper for other baseball related research, I kept an eye out for boxscores. Each day Mr. Miller pitched, the reporter would refer to him him as only “Miller”. Well, I can see why we didn’t know his first name. No one ever used his first name!
It was because of sports writer and hobby pioneer Wirt Gammon and his daily feature “Between us fans” that we now know the first name of the player featured on the T210 card known as Miller, Chattanooga.

So here’s to you, Mr. Fred Miller.   Sorry it took a few years to remember your first name.