NNO Johnny Evers

Johnny Joseph Evers (1881–1947) appears here on the E101 Anonymous Set of 50, the candy-card issue distributed without any printed manufacturer attribution — "NNO" being collector shorthand for the no-name-on classification. The left-handed hitting, right-throwing Chicago Cubs second baseman was depicted in his Cubs uniform during the 1909–1911 window when the E101 set circulated alongside the better-documented American Caramel and tobacco issues. Evers was the cerebral middle name of the Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance double-play combination, the trio that anchored the Cubs to four National League pennants between 1906 and 1910. He was the player whose alertness during the 1908 Merkle game — retrieving the ball and forcing out the runner who had failed to touch second — ultimately tipped the National League pennant to Chicago in a season that would have otherwise belonged to the New York Giants. Wiry and combative — teammates called him "The Crab" for his dugout disposition as much as his fielding stance — Evers played past his Cubs years with the Boston Braves, where he won the 1914 World Series as a player, and even returned briefly as a 47-year-old coach-player for Boston in 1929. He died March 28, 1947 in Albany, New York. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946 by the Old Timers Committee — enshrined the same year as Tinker and Chance, the three of them entering Cooperstown as the inseparable infield trio Franklin P. Adams' verse had made permanent.