Terrible Card Tuesday: 1901 Ben Harrison

Scott Fennessy passed on a very interesting card from the 1901 season set.  Interesting in a couple ways. 

First, while Scott passed this Harrison card on to me, both he and I didn’t know if he fit neatly into one of my categories.  He has no hit numbers which is odd for a non-pitcher.  However, he does have eleven 14s on his card.  Pretty nifty.  As Scott told me, it fits into a more ‘Weird’ category’. 

Ben Harrison batted three times for the Washington Senators.  In those three plate appearances, he walked once.  That’s about the extent of his statistical presence on the baseball scene in 1901.  That was the only year he played ball.  In fact, all three plate appearances were in just one game. 

What I found even more interesting about Harrison is that his entry on Baseball Reference.com was quite incomplete to the point of not even listing his first name.  There’s also no data on which side he batted from or which arm he threw with. 

I realize info on early baseball era players is a bit spotty but I’ve found that data on B-R is usually pretty solid.  It did make me wonder how the APBA Company got the data.  Sure enough though, I did find some info on this page on a Ben Harrison from 1901 with corresponding stats.  Since I’m such an avid user of the site, I’ll forward the info on to Baseball Reference so they can update their database. 

You just never know when someone might need to know more about Mr. Harrison from 1901.