1.5x2-5/8". 300+ card set. The 1911 Sporting Life (M116) Baseball card set was distributed to subscribers of the popular magazine "Sporting Life", the primary competitor of the well-circulated "Sporting News."  The cards feature full-color likenesses of each player centered within a white border with the player's surname, the team's city and league printed at the bottom. The unnumbered cards were sold by mail in 12-card lots issued in 24 series, with the final three series being the rarest. (This final group of 72 cards has "Over 300 subjects" printed on the reverse, while the majority of the set have various ads from the weekly paper on the backs. Blue-background cards are scarcer than the pastel or other backgrounds. The third series of the 1911 Sporting Life reveal minor differences in sizing, color and portrait styles.

Raymond was born in Chicago. He started his professional baseball career with the Waterloo Microbes in 1904. After a short stint with the Tigers, Raymond returned to the minors. He developed his spitball sometime in 1906. With the new pitch, he had a big season in 1907, going 35-11 for the South Atlantic League's Charleston Sea Gulls. Raymond pitched a no-hitter that year, as well, and led Charleston to the pennant. The Cardinals purchased him in September, and in 1908, he was the best pitcher on the team. His 2.03 earned run average ranked tenth in the National League, and his 145 strikeouts were fourth-best. During the 1908 season, he gave up fewer hits per game than Christy Mathewson and threw five shutouts, but he was also on the mound eleven times when the Cardinals failed to score.