NNO John McGraw

John Joseph "Little Napoleon" McGraw (1873–1934) appears here in the E101 Anonymous Set of 50, one of the most prized of the unidentified early caramel issues. By the time the E101 cards reached the candy counter around 1910, McGraw was already six years into his managerial reign with the New York Giants, having taken over in mid-1902 and run the club until 1932. As a player he was the scrappy third baseman of the 1890s Baltimore Orioles, a left-handed hitter who threw right and made an art of working the umpire and fouling off pitches; he batted over .320 nine times. As a manager he piloted the Giants to ten National League pennants and three World Series championships, doing it with the same combative streak that defined his playing days. The E101 image is shared across several anonymous and branded sets of the period, a function of how the source photographs were licensed. McGraw died February 25, 1934 in New Rochelle, New York and is buried at New Cathedral Cemetery in Baltimore. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1937 in the second class.