Despite being an excellent ballplayer, Jimmy Williams is one of the most overlooked players in the 150-350 Series by T206 collectors. Not too long ago, I was talking with my friend Scott Gross, and shared a scan of a new Jimmy Williams card I had added to my collection. Scott mentioned that he considered Williams’ T206 card to be one of the most ignored/forgotten cards in the set. I had to agree. Once he mentioned it, I realized that I was guilty of it myself. It’s obviously debatable whether he is in fact the most overlooked player in the 150-350 Series, or just one of the most. But when you take into consideration how good he was, it makes our collective oversight of him all the more egregious.
Let’s take a look at why Williams has been so overlooked by collectors. For one thing, the pose used for his card is not particularly exciting. I happen to find the artwork and colors extremely appealing, but the same can be said for just about any other card in the 150-350 Series. Aesthetically, Williams’ card just doesn’t stand out.
Another contributing factor is that Williams was not printed with some of the more desirable 150-350 Series backs. Williams was printed with the following 8 backs:
- Old Mill
- Piedmont 150
- Piedmont 350
- Sovereign 150
- Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 25
- Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 30
- Sweet Caporal 350 Factory 25
- Sweet Caporal 350 Factory 30
He was not printed with these 4 backs:
- Brown Hindu
- El Principe de Gales
- Sovereign 350
- Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 649
Most 150-350 Series poses* were printed with 9 or more of the possible 12 backs. A few poses, such as Bresnahan (Portrait), Griffith (Portrait), and Johnson (Portrait) were printed with all 12 backs. In fact, Williams’ 8 backs is the lowest of any 150-350 Series pose that was printed for the entire production run*.
To the best of my knowledge, there are only three other poses in the 150-350 Series that were printed with just 8 different backs**. Wid Conroy (Fielding) and Ed Hahn were printed with the exact same 8 backs that Williams was printed with. Jiggs Donahue was also printed with 8 different backs, but with a slightly different mix. Rather than an Old Mill back, Donahue was printed with a Sovereign 350 back.
On the field, Williams was a stud. Three of his first four seasons were nothing short of incredible, and the other seven seasons were very solid. In 1899, as a 22 year-old rookie for Pittsburgh, he had his best season. In 153 games, he had 220 hits, a .354 Batting Average, and a .946 OPS. He led the league in Triples with 27, and placed 3rd in the National League in WAR for Position Players with a 6.9 mark.
Limited to just 106 games in his second Major League season due to an ankle injury, Williams had a disappointing season. He hit just .264 with an OPS of .712.
In 1901, he was back to full strength and put together another tremendous season. This was his first season with the Baltimore Orioles. He played in 130 games and had 159 hits. 21 of those hits were triples, which led the American League. He hit .317 with a .883 OPS, which ranked 5th in the American League.
In 1902, he put up a remarkably similar season to his 1901 output. For the third time, Williams led his league in triples, again hitting 21 of them. In 125 games, he hit .313 to go with an OPS of .861, which was good for 6th in the A.L.
After those first four seasons, Williams came down to earth. He played seven more years in the bigs, but never again hit .300. He did however, continue to produce at a very high level. Throughout his short 11-year career, he was extremely consistent. If you ignore his second season (1900), in which he played only 106 games, and his final season (1909) when he played just 110 games, that leaves nine seasons in which he played more or less full-time. In seven of those nine seasons, he finished in the Top Ten in RBI for his league. That’s pretty incredible!
In addition to being a very productive hitter, Williams provided value at a premium defensive position. Williams spent his first three seasons at third base and shortstop. In sharp contrast to his offensive statistics, he began his career as a subpar defensive player. He made 67 errors as a rookie in 1899 and followed it up with 54 in just 104 games in 1900. In 1901, his first season as a full-time second baseman, he committed another 52 errors, this time in 130 games. He settled in a second baseman and his defense steadily improved. From 1903 to 1909, his fielding percentage was never below .951.
As a testament to his improvement, in 1903, Williams was 4th in Defensive War in the A.L. with a mark of 1.7. In 1904, he followed it up with a 1.2 dWar, which was good for 10th in the American League. All in all, he had a fantastic career, albeit a short one.
One of my favorite things about collecting the T206 set is you can buy a card of an extremely good player like Jimmy Williams for the same price as a card of an obscure player who only played a few seasons in the minors. If you’re the type of collector who likes to look for tough backs, you’ll want to find either an Old Mill, which is the toughest, or a Sovereign 150, which is also pretty hard-to-find. If you don’t care too much about backs, a Piedmont or Sweet Caporal should be pretty easy to find. Whatever you decide, you can’t go wrong. I think an argument could be made that Jimmy Williams is the most underrated player in the entire set.
* Poses that were pulled from production early, or put into production late will be printed with less than 8 backs. Examples of these poses are: All of the 150 Only Subjects, All of the Elite 11 Subjects, as well as Crawford (Throwing) and Jennings (Portrait)
**I am pretty sure this group of 4 players is the full list, but it’s possible that I’m missing a player or two. As far as I know, there aren’t any reliable checklists to look this up, so I had to go off the top of my head and check my memory against the individual back checklists on t206resource.com. If I forgot any pose, please let me know in the comments section.