• Card series: 1880s: Loving Paupers
• City: Milwaukee
• Team: Creams
• League: Western Association

George William McVey (1865-1896) had a much-traveled professional career in baseball, almost all of it in the minors. He played for 20 different franchises beginning in 1884 with the Chillicothe Logans of the Ohio State League and ending with the Quincy Browns of the Western Association in 1895. Along the way he made stops in the Southern League/Association, Tri-State, Texas-Southern, Central Interstate, Pacific Northwest/Interstate and Ohio-Michigan Leagues. George’s sole chance to see action in the major leagues came with the Brooklyn Grays of the American Association in 1885. He played catcher and first base for Brooklyn, but only got into six games where his .143 average led to his return to the minors. That same season saw “Big George” back in Atlanta where he caught the attention of The Sporting News who reported on September 23 that he had “made quite a reputation as a catcher and outfielder in the Southern League.” The sturdy McVey stood 6’1” and, by the end of his career, was known for his size as noted in another Sporting News item from August, 1895: “Big George McVey is playing a good game at first . . . and is hitting at a four hundred gait.” Tragically, this would be his last and best ball. He was reported in April ‘96 to be suffering bowel troubles. He died the following month in Quincy, Illinois.

• A clue to McVey’s peripatetic sojourn in baseball comes from a report in the Milwaukee Sentinel on May 9, 1889 where it was stated that George and Creams teammate Billy Klusman “were released for getting on a spree in St. Joseph.” If this was indicative of a dissolute lifestyle, McVey would hardly be the first of his era’s players to succumb to the temptations and deprivations of the times that shortened far too many careers