Cubs historical sleuthing: Ernie Banks baseball card error edition

This looks like an ordinary sleuthing job, an old black and white photo showing a Cubs batter wearing No. 19.

Here’s why it’s not:

That... is emphatically NOT Ernie Banks.

This is from Upper Deck’s Hall of Famers set, released in 2001.

My friend and Cubs By The Numbers co-author Kasey Ignarski sent me this card and asked me who it actually is. Told him I’d look into it and get back to him. This was quite the little sleuthing journey but I can tell you who this is a photo of and what date this photo was taken.

Here’s how I figured it out. First, the photo was taken at the Polo Grounds in New York. How do I know that? Check out this photo, taken in 1962:

 Photo by Herb Scharfman /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images

The fence you see in the background of the photo at the top of this post matches exactly to the fence in that photo, which is from the Mets’ first Opening Day at the Polo Grounds in 1962.

Next: This style of Cubs road uniform was worn from 1958 to 1968. But since there was no National League baseball at the Polo Grounds from 1958-61, and it closed after 1963, that limits this to two seasons, 1962 and 1963. Here are the Cubs who wore No. 19 in those two seasons:

Daryl Robertson (1962), Elder White (1962), Billy Ott (1962), Jimmy Stewart (1963-67)

White did not play any games in the Polo Grounds in 1962. Ott did, but he was a switch-hitter and in the two games he played there in 1962, he faced only righthanded pitchers and would have batted lefthanded against them. So those two are eliminated.

That leaves Robertson and Stewart.

Let’s check Jimmy “Not The Actor” Stewart first. He did not play any in games in the Polo Grounds in 1963.

Thus this has to be Daryl Robertson batting for the Cubs against the Mets at the Polo Grounds. Robertson played in two such games in 1962. One of those games was a night game, and the photo we are looking at here is definitely from a day game.

And so, the photo had to be taken Wednesday, May 16, 1962. That game went 11 innings and the Cubs lost 6-5. Robertson went 0-for-3 with a walk and RBI. The RBI was in the second inning. It was a sacrifice fly and scored, of all people, Ernie Banks. We can’t tell what at-bat this was, but it’s definitely from that game. Attendance that day at the Polo Grounds was 3,273, which matches the handful of fans we see in the background.

What’s most interesting about this photo is that Daryl Robertson played exactly nine games for the Cubs — nine MLB games, in fact, he never played in the majors again after 1962. He started just five of those nine games and went 2-for-19 with 10 strikeouts.

Robertson was sent to the team’s Double-A affiliate in San Antonio a few days after this game in New York and about two weeks after that was sent to the Cardinals as part of a deal that brought Alex Grammas and Don Landrum to the Cubs. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2018, so there’s no way to ask him about this.

And yet, here he is, immortalized forever on a baseball card that purports to be of Ernie Banks.

Thanks to Kasey for sending this along so this mystery could be unraveled.