1934-1936 Diamond Stars: #85 Julius Solters

Sunday, September 12, 2021

#85 Julius Solters - St. Louis Browns

Julius Joseph Solters

St. Louis Browns

Outfield

Bats: Right Throws: Right Height: 6'0" Weight: 190

Born: March 22, 1906, Pittsburgh, PA

Major League Teams: Boston Red Sox 1934-1935; St. Louis Browns 1935-1936; Cleveland Indians 1937-1939; St. Louis Browns 1939; Chicago White Sox 1940-1941, 1943

Died: September 28, 1975, Pittsburgh, PA (69)

In 1932, while playing for the Albany Senators in the Eastern League, Julius Solters was given the nickname Moose by Albany manager Bill McCorry and the name stuck throughout the rest of his playing career. Solters was a power-hitting outfield prospect with the Red Sox and began the 1935 season as Boston's opening day left fielder. On May 27th that season, while the St. Louis Browns were in Boston, the Red Sox were in need of an infielder and Solters was dealt to the Browns for Ski Melillo (#53). Apparently, without a new uniform, Solters had to attempt to wear the much smaller Melillo's old Browns uniform for the series, with Browns manager Rogers Hornsby (#44) promising to get Solters a bigger uniform once the team returned to St. Louis.

Solters clubbed a career-high 136 RBIs in 1936 with the Browns, but he was on the move again in January 1937 when he was dealt to Cleveland. In his first year with the Indians, he batted a career high .323 to go along with a career-high 20 home runs. He's spend the next several seasons as a bench player before getting a chance for more regular playing time with the White Sox in 1940. On August 1, 1941, Solters was hit with an errant pre-game throw to the head that knocked him unconscious and would ultimately lead to his complete blindness. He retired after nine seasons in the majors with 990 hits, and a .289 batting average to go along with 83 home runs and 599 RBIs.

Building the Set

August 26, 2021 from Port Washington, NY (Clean Sweep Auctions) - Card #25

I returned to Clean Sweep Auctions for a trio of cards for my Diamond Stars set to celebrate recent positive work-related news. Again, while some people would prefer expensive trinkets or a fancy night on the town after a professional achievement, I prefer to celebrate by buying a few old baseball cards. I'm getting more familiar with a lot of the usual players involved in eBay auctions for these older pre-war cards, and I've found Clean Sweep regularly has the most reasonable prices for their cards. I've learned to steer clear of certain sellers who typically mark up their prices at what are occasionally twice as much as the same cards from Clean Sweep. Another challenge while trying to build this set is trying to stay away from graded/slabbed cards. I'd like to house the entire set in nine-pocket pages, in order, and so far I've been able to save myself the trouble of buying a slabbed card and having to jailbreak it from the hard plastic casing. I realize I may decide to break this rule for some of the pricier cards in the set when I get to the point of adding those.

This is the first card I've added from the set's third and final series, issued in 1936, and the first card overall from that third series. All the cards issued in 1936 by National Chicle contain blue ink on the card backs, instead of the green ink used for the cards issued in 1934 and 1935.

Variations Available

1 - 1936 / blue back / 1935 statistics / 1936 copyright

The Card / Browns Team Set

Solters is shown attempting a diving catch in the outfield, and I imagine the artist had to swap out his Red Sox uniform for a Browns uniform. It looks as if someone may have taken a pencil to this card over the years and underlined Solters' new team, the Browns, on the back of the card.

1936 Season

Solters began the season with the Browns and he was the club's steady left fielder. He appeared in 152 games, batting .291 with 17 home runs and 134 RBIs. While his RBI total led the team, his home run total was second on the club behind third baseman Harlond Clift (#122). Amazingly, his high RBI total was fifth in the league behind Zeke Bonura (#65), Jimmie Foxx (#64), Lou Gehrig (#130) and Hal Trosky (#70) who led the league with 162 RBIs. Solters most frequently shared the Browns outfield with Beau Bell in right and Sam West in center.