Baseball is the oldest professional sport in America, beginning in the mid-1800s and still running strong to this day. Despite both New York teams being out of contention for the 2016 championship, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is giving New Yorkers a chance to look back at baseball history in the city in a unique way – through baseball cards.
The Old Ball Game, which opened in June and runs until November 13, is a dedicated to the history of America’s pastime in America’s biggest city. Featuring cards from all four major league teams that have called the city home, the exhibit showcases over 300 cards. The earliest date back to the 1880s and the latest are from the 1970s.
The exhibition was put together by Allison Rudnick, Assistant Curator in the Drawing and Prints Department, who has been at the Met for seven years. She sees how special New York City has been in the history of the sport.
“The story of baseball in New York is unique – it has this fascinating story here,” said Rudnick. “There are lots of milestones that happened in New York City.”
Rudnick picked approximately 300 cards out of a group of 30,000, almost all of which are part of the Jefferson Burdick collection of items donated to the museum. Rudnick chose cards of historical importance in New York, as well as cards that were aesthetically attractive. Aside from the story of baseball, these cards also show how the production of sports cards has evolved over time, which Rudnick wanted to highlight.
“I was interested in how these things were produced technically – some were lithograph, some were photographs. So I wanted to include cards that were made using both of those techniques, to show it wasn’t uniform, especially in the early days,” said Rudnick.
Some of the more notable cards include Jackie Robinson’s rookie card from 1947 (when he broke the color barrier in professional baseball) as well as cards of Babe Ruth, perhaps the best and most famous baseball players of all time.
Despite the rise of the internet to keep track of statistics, baseball cards remain a popular item to collect for fans young and old. Rudnick believes the continued popularity is due to a combination of childhood memories and pop culture stature.
“I think for a lot of people, it can be nostalgic. I’ve had a lot of visitors come, who are of a certain age, who remember watching [some of] these players play in person or on TV. A lot of the players in the exhibition became celebrities, where even people who wouldn’t consider themselves baseball fans know their names,” said Rudnick. “I think people like to see that it has this history and this legacy. It is dear to many people’s hearts.”
The event was originally was supposed to close in October, but was extended to the second week of November due to the popularity of the exhibit. Even after it closes, Rudnick wants museum goers to know that the Met has cards on display at all times. Approximately every six months, they rotate in a small group of cards with different themes for the public to view.
Baseball cards have remained popular even through America’s toughest times. One of Rudnick’s favorite series of cards in this exhibition was produced by Goudey Gum Company during the The Great Depression. Executives were worried that struggling Americans wouldn’t buy cards, but they found that cards still sold, even though fans couldn’t afford to go to games. They bought these small rectangles of cardboard and ink to get their fix of the game they loved.
To learn more about the exhibition, check out metmuseum.org. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is located in Central Park, just off of Fifth Avenue, from E. 80th street to 84th street.
