He Ain’t Whitey, He’s His Brother

November 13th, 2010  |  Published in Brothers, Football Card Trivia  |  2 Comments

1951 Bowman Al Wistert football cardYesterday, while I was adding the Eagles Honor Roll to the Vintage Football Card Gallery, I did a web search for “Whitey Wistert.” Al Wistert is a member of the Eagles Honor Roll, and some of his cards say “Al ‘Whitey’ Wistert.”

My search results were interesting: they included a lot of references to Al’s football cards and a lot of references to Al’s older brother, Francis “Whitey” Wistert. Only a couple of non-football-card references, which appeared way down in my search results, referred to Al as “Whitey.” Most references to Al said his nickname was “Ox.”

According to an article on profootballresearchers.org, both Francis and Al were called “Whitey.” I’m guessing, though, that if people called Al “Whitey,” they did so out either out of confusion or as a tribute to Francis. Francis was a football and baseball star at Michigan, and he played major league baseball for Cincinnati.

Anyway, since Al’s brother Francis was well-known as “Whitey,” since Al was more often called “Ox,” and since mistakes are far from unusual on old football cards, I would say that calling Al “Whitey” was just another card company mistake. I suspect that some writers referred to Al as “Whitey” because that’s what it said on his cards.

Pictured here is one of Al’s error cards, a 1951 Bowman. His 1948 Leaf and 1949 Leaf cards also say “Whitey.”

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Responses

  1. John A. Rorabacher says:

    November 28th, 2010 at 2:47 PM (#)

    I was, for a time, Al’s son-in-law. No one ever called him Whitey. He was always Ox. The misprint on the Bowman card should actually make it more valuable.

    I might add, in all my life I have never met a person who loved either Michigan or the Eagles as much as Al. A bit quirky but loveable nonetheless. He deserves all the respect he has earned both as a football player, an insurance agent, and especially as a father of three daughters.

  2. nearmint says:

    November 29th, 2010 at 4:12 PM (#)

    Hi John, thanks for the info on Al. It’s always interesting to hear from people who know the players. It sounds like someone mistakenly called Al “Whitey,” then others repeated the mistake.

    Error cards typically aren’t worth more than other cards, probably because they aren’t rare. If there were two versions of the card, an error version and a corrected version, the rarer of the two might be worth more. That’s the case with the Tinsley and White cards in the 1955 Topps All-American set.