V. Willis St. L Pitch

Victor Gazaway "Vic" Willis (1876–1947) appears here on the T206 White Border tobacco set in the pitching-pose card that captures him in his St. Louis Cardinals uniform — the "St. L Pitch" identifier in collector shorthand referring to the St. Louis assignment of his late-career stop. The right-handed Willis had spent most of his career as a workhorse Boston Beaneaters and Pittsburgh Pirates starter, leading the National League in wins, complete games, and at one point also losses — the latter the byproduct of being the only reliable arm on a Boston club that lost 100 games in seasons when Willis still managed twenty-plus victories of his own. By the 1909 T206 cycle, he had moved to the Pirates, won a World Series ring with the 1909 Pittsburgh club that took down Detroit in seven games, and would soon finish his career with St. Louis — the team listed on this T206 variation. T206 issued multiple Willis variations across his various uniforms, which is what makes the parenthetical team-tag necessary on collectors' inventories. He retired after the 1910 season. He died August 3, 1947 in Elkton, Maryland. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1995 by the Veterans Committee — a long-delayed recognition for a deadball-era pitcher whose career win and complete-game totals had been overshadowed by his more famous contemporaries Mathewson, Brown, and Young.