The Following Lot Originates from the Jake Virtue Estate Collection (click here for info.)
John Gibson Clarkson was a Major League Baseball right-handed pitcher from 1882-1894. He was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veteran’s Committee in 1963. And RIGHTLY SO! He won 328 games in just 12 seasons, which places him 12th on the all-time list. He was first in that category at the time of his retirement from the Cleveland Spiders in 1894.
Clarkson pitched over 600 innings (not a misprint!) in two different seasons and won an astounding 53 games in 1885 for the Chicago White Stockings. That season, in a remarkable feat of durability, he appeared in 70 games, pitched 623 innings, and threw 68 complete games including a no-hitter. He had an ERA of 1.85 with 308 strikeouts, and his 53 wins were out of the 83 total won by his National League Championship Team.
Only Charles Radbourn has ever won more games (59) in a single season. In just five years from 1885-1889, pitching for Chicago and the Boston Beaneaters, Clarkson won 209 games; an eye-popping average of nearly 42 wins per season. His pitching repertoire featured a variety of curveballs, and he was considered to be a “calculating, scientific pitcher who carefully analyzed hitter’s weaknesses”; someone, in today’s vernacular, we would call a “student of the game.”
Clarkson has two brothers who were also pitchers and two cousins who also played Major League Baseball. The three Clarkson brothers stand third all-time in wins behind the Niekro and Perry Brothers. In 1888 the White Stocking sold him to the Boston Beaneaters for $10,000 – A huge sum at the time. Clarkson followed HOF’er King Kelly, his friend and battery mate who had been sold the previous year to Boston for the same amount. They famously became known as the “$20,000 Battery.”
“Total Baseball” ranked John Clarkson as the fourth best pitcher of all-time behind Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, and Lefty Grove.
Clarkson is featured here on this stunning cabinet produced by the Pifer & Becker Photo Palace of Cleveland, Ohio. This cabinet, along with the five other Pifer & Becker cabinets in the Jake Virtue Collection featured in this auction bear the same images featured in one of the nineteenth-century collecting world's holy grail card issues, the 1893 Just So Tobacco card set. All Just So Tobacco cards, which exclusively feature Cleveland Spiders players, are exceedingly rare. It has been estimated that fewer than twenty-five examples in total are known in the entire collecting world, with fourteen different players represented. The matching images of these cabinets with their Just So counterparts leaves no doubt that these cabinets are the parents of that revered issue.
The rarity of this John Clarkson cabinet is only equaled by its extraordinary condition. From the crystal clear image to the gold gilt edges of the 4-1/8” by 6-1/2” mount, the entire piece demonstrates the highest standards of photographic quality and presentation possible from the era. Mystifyingly Graded VG-EX (MK) by PSA, the piece has a minimally EX-MT appearance. The MK qualifier is justified by the pencil writing on the reverse in the hand of Jake Virtue that identifies the subject “John Clarkson” and instructs, “Return to J.K. Virtue 637 Vine St. Camden N.J.” LOA from the Jake Virtue Estate.