Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Interestingly, his pfr page has his year of birth as 1918. I wonder if he lied on his draft card to get in the military. Hmmm.

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/ ... ndSp00.htm

ChrisBabcock wrote:Interestingly, his pfr page has his year of birth as 1918. I wonder if he lied on his draft card to get in the military. Hmmm.

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/ ... ndSp00.htm

He must have. Here is his Social Security Administration info:

Name Orban E. Sanders
Social Security Number 446-09-1939
Birth Date 26 Jan 1918
Issue year Before 1951
Issue State Oklahoma
Last Residence73505, Lawton, Comanche, Oklahoma, USA
Death Date 6 Jul 2003

I've been spending a lot of time on Ancestry the last few weeks (wrapping up a book about GIs in European Theatre in World War II) and had a long conversation with a prof. geneaologist (sp). She warned me about something I've been finding out myself---birth years up through about 1920 are often unreliable, even those found in Social Security and death records. I don't know how many people I've been researching who have 2, 3, 4 different dates for their birth year. The most dependable source is a birth certificate issued contemporaneously with a baby's birth. Beginning in early 1900s, attending physicians and licensed midwives were required to report live births and stillborns to local health dept. within 5 days of birth, though even then many births were not recorded until years after the fact, by which time the exact year might be an educated guess.

The problem was really prevalent in immigrant families. Most babies were delivered at home by a female family member or neighbor who acted as the midwife, and some didn't care or know enough to report it. There was an inherent distrust of authorities that carried over from the Old World. I found one Pole in Detroit in 1917 whose wife had 11 children, all born in the US, and not a single one had ever been issued a birth certificate!

I have a few index cards signed by him in my collection, ranging from 1949 to 1979 date indication (another might be 1947, but the 4 is missing on the postmark).

On all the cards he signed Speck, though the 1949 was not a full k (more of a c with an added downward mark at the end of Spec-. Definitely not a full K though). On one, he also signed his full name. Again, all the other items I have signed by him are definitely Speck.

Great find on the draft card and this is really interesting. Have we been spelling his name wrong? Personally, for my own writing at least, I would spell it the way he spelled it. That seems best.

All of this is awesome. So we have 3 different possible birthdays for Sanders, all the same date but different years:

Jan 26, 1917 (draft card)
Jan 26, 1918 (SSA/PFR)
Jan 26, 1919 (Wikipedia/?)

Based on the available evidence, I'd guess the 1918 one is the most likely to be reliable. In any case, it highlights a fact about Sanders that is often lost in the discussion of his short career: he was likely already over 30 when he got injured, and retired at 32 or 33. That's not young for any player in that era. He lost three of his best playing years to military service, and had he not, 44-45 especially weren't years where much of anything special happened in the NFL. Therefore, I'd put him down as likely to have won at least one NFL MVP in that stretch, given that the dual-threat quarterbacks of the time were quite popular picks, and he was the most advanced iteration of that archetype. So between that and the circumstances of the injury, how much can he be forgiven for having a brief stretch of dominance? I'm sure he would be more had he not played primarily in the AAFC. He's probably already where he belongs in the inner circle of the HOVG, though; he's the kind of player that I wouldn't gripe about if he made the HOF in 1970, but also not one I'd gripe about to get in now with so much backlog from that era already. Just imagine if he played, say, 1943-52, though... maybe we wouldn't be talking so much about Otto Graham these days.

I would love to see Bdbop's autograph specimens, particularly the 1949 one he mentions with an ambiguous ending, and any other contemporary examples which he states to clearly show "Speck". If the evidence continues to flow strongly in the direction of "Speck" as the primary spelling starting in his playing career and throughout his life, that is when I'd suggest that his PFR (and HOVG) heading be changed to reflect that. I have no idea what kind of review process such a request goes through, but I'd be willing to bet several people here in this community are at the forefront of it.

James-

If you wish (open to all others as well), you can e-mail me and I can send you photos of the examples I have of Speck Sanders' signature. A text number to send them to is preferred, as sometimes my phone goes a bit crazy on sending attached photos.

E-mail is: bdbop@aol.com
Text is: 614-507-1653

Bart

So, I was going through a bunch of stuff I obtained from the Chet Mutryn estate, and in it was a three-volume set of signatures. George Buksar (1949-52 Chicago/Baltimore/Washington) was working to get Chet honored in the Buffalo Bills Wall of Fame, as well as the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He had obtained the signatures of pretty much any notable player in the AAFC, as well as people like Paul Brown, in order to show that there is support among his teammates and competitors. One of the signatures was from Sanders. He clearly spelled it Speck. I am looking for dates, but I am guessing this was in the 1990s.

I feel Mutryn has a HOVG case ... Spec looks cooler than Speck ...

Brian wolf wrote:I feel Mutryn has a HOVG case ... Spec looks cooler than Speck ...

You'll get no argument from me or Ken C