A new Bloomers…no, wait…Bloomington Cardinals photo. Here we have Ol’ Stubblebeard himself, wearing his Cardinals uniform on May 4, 1935 - the day before they opened the season in Terre Haute, IN against the Tots.

Grimes, the 270 game winner and Hall of Famer, finished his pro career as player/manager for the Cards. He went 10-5 on the mound that year and the Cards finished 75-44 to win the Three I League by one game over the Springfield (IL) Senators.

Fun fact: the uniforms the ‘35 Cards wore were worn by the 1934 STL Cardinals when they won the World Series.

Pretty excited to pick up this 1911 Bill Steen Obak card from his time with the Portland Beavers. Steen was a Bloomer in 1909 and went 18-15 that year - as shown on the back of this card. He went 30-15 for the Beavers in 1911.

Steen went 28-32 over 4 big league seasons. He spent time with Cleveland and Detroit.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=steen-001wil

https://www.onmantel.com/post/66b7eed4-1690-4308-898f-c155c662442e?createComment=true

I was able to pick up an awesome snap shot of Chico Hernandez attempting to make a play at the plate. Hopefully the ump didn’t need to review the photo to see that the ball is loose! What a shot!!! I’m going to dig more into the details of the photo to try to learn the name of the other players and the ump. Chico drove in 85 runs and hit .337 for the 1938 Bloomers. He went on to be a part of the first all Latin battery in MLB history when he caught Hiram Bithorn in a Cubs game in 1942.

https://mchistory.org/assets/resources/articles/pantagraph-hernandez-chico-1732307477.pdf

Ol’ Stubblebeard was player/manager of the 1935 Bloomington Bloomers. That year Grimes went 10-5 on the mound and led the team to a Three-I League championship. He won 272 games during his Hall of Fame career.

The ‘33 Goudey set is an all-timer and I love the image of Grimes in his Cubs uniform against that blue background.