If you’re a regular reader, you know I have a thing for the 1936 Goudey Wide Pen (Type 1) set. It’s a relatively lonely obsession. Rarely does anyone post or comment about these cards, so I was excited to see a Tweet with Bill Brubaker’s card staring out at me.
Marc Brubaker, who I follow on Twitter, does some cool custom cards. (Marc’s a photographer and you can check him out here.) He Tweeted about some new lenses and the recent acquisition of his namesake’s card.
I’ve looked at this Brubaker card a lot, but, for the first time, really honed in on the huge black arm band on his left sleeve. I had to look that up and see what was going on in 1935 or 1936. According to the Hall of Fame website, the Bucs wore that in 1932 after the death of their longtime owner Barney Dreyfuss. Odd. Why did it then appear on a card a few years later? Did they wear it multiple years? Brubaker had appeared in 7 games in 1932 but broke out in ’36. It seemed unlikely he’d be photographed in 1932.
The thing I love about Twitter is you get pretty fast access to very talented people. I knew what to do – retweet to Tom Shieber, Paul Lukas and John Thorn. Shieber, an amazing researcher (and close friend), is a legend at solving pictorial mysteries. He won SABR’s Henry Chadwick Award this year. (Read his always excellent blog here).
Tom got back to me immediately and he had an answer, but not one I was expecting. I figured he’d give me some arm band info, but no. He had more.
“Definitely a 1932 Pirates uniform (armband and style of “P” from that season only). But, definitely not Bill Brubaker. It’s actually a photo of Dave Barbee, who played 97 games for the Pirates in 1932. Looks like we have an error in the 1936 Goudey Wide Pen set!”
He’s right, of course. I Googled Dave Barbee to see what he looked like, and came across this, an auction for the George Burke original Sporting News photo:
I can’t help but wonder if there are more errors in this set. As I’ve written, the checklist is filled with relative nobodies, so there could very well be more mistakes.
Good thing I keep Tom Shieber close at hand.
SABR's Baseball Cards Research Committee 
I won’t lie – it was a little disappointing to discover, but I had my suspicions already that either this or his Play Ball cards were bearing the wrong photo. This is in the regular Goudey set as well, so we discovered a double error.
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