Newly Discovered Early 19th Century Piece of Baseball History to be on Display in Chicago until July 31
Noted Baseball Historians Henry W. (Hank) Thomas, Kevin M. Keating and Frank J. Ceresi announced today that the recently discovered first-known baseball card, which dates to the early 19th century and predates other known cards by several decades, will be on display in Chicago. The card will be on exhibit at the National Sports Collectors Convention held at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, 5555 North River Road, Rosemont, Illinois (a Chicago suburb) until July 31. The display is located at Booths 160 and 162.
Washington, D.C. (PRWEB) July 29, 2005 -- Baseball historians Henry W. (Hank)
Thomas, Kevin M. Keating and Frank J. Ceresi announced today that the recently
discovered first known baseball card, which dates to the early 19th century and
predates other known cards by several decades, will be on display at the
National Sports Collectors Convention at the Donald E. Stephens Convention
Center, 5555 North River Road, Rosemont, Illinois 60018, until July 31. The
display is located at Booths 160 and 162.
This historically significant
discovery made its public debut at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington,
D.C. on Thursday, July 14, 2005.
Thomas, grandson of Baseball Hall of
Fame Pitcher Walter Johnson, recently acquired a card depicting a “bat and ball
game” after its discovery in an attic in Maine. He immediately teamed with
Keating and Ceresi to examine and authenticate the find. The card, part of a
children's educational game, illustrates several boys playing together in a
field as one pitches a ball to another holding a bat. As the card's caption
states, “Boys delight with ball to play…” The three historians, after a battery
of tests and analyses, determined that the card was manufactured in the first
few decades of the 19th century.
“It is a humbling experience to have
unearthed a card that affirms the existence and growth of the sport early in our
nation's history,” said Thomas.
Thomas is a renowned baseball historian,
collector and dealer of vintage sports memorabilia specializing in the
Washington Senators, where his grandfather pitched for 20 years. Walter Johnson
finished his career with 417 wins—second only to Cy Young—before being inducted
into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in its inaugural 1936 class, which
also includes Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Christy Matthewson, and Honus
Wagner.
Thomas wrote the definitive biography Walter Johnson: Baseball's
Big Train, which won the Casey Award for the best baseball book of 1995. He also
produced and edited the 5-hour audio version of Lawrence Ritter's classic
baseball oral history, The Glory of Their Times, from Ritter's original taped
interviews.
West Point graduate Abner Doubleday (USMA 1842) has long been
reputed by many to be the “Father of Baseball,” and now another West Pointer
finds himself part of baseball history. Kevin Keating (USMA 1982), a former Army
Ranger turned baseball historian, autograph expert and agent to Hall of Famers
Warren Spahn and Whitey Ford, has worked to verify the origins of “The Card”
since Hank Thomas's discovery. Thomas went to Keating, longtime owner of Quality
Autographs and Memorabilia, for assistance from an individual who has made his
authentication services available to the White House, the National Sports
Gallery and the Federal Bureau of Investigation among other national and
international entities.
“When Hank brought me the card, I couldn't
believe what he had discovered,” said Keating. “I knew immediately that I was
looking at a period card depicting the genesis of baseball.”
Joining
Thomas and Keating in their effort to unveil “The Card” to the American public
and increase general awareness about the origins of baseball is distinguished
columnist, appraiser and former museum curator Frank Ceresi.
Ceresi,
owner of FC Associates—a Virginia-based museum consulting and appraisal firm,
served as Curator and Executive Director of Collections for the National Sports
Gallery until 2001. He has written extensively on the history of sports and the
value of sports artifacts and other national treasures as an essayist and
columnist for several publications, including Sports Collectors Digest and The
Vintage & Classic Baseball Collector, and for BaseballLibrary.com,
Baseball-Alamanac.com, AuctionWatch.com, and others.
“Baseball is an
inextricable part of our national identity,” said Ceresi. “This card is more
than a two-dimensional representation of the early origins of the game. It
illustrates the formation of a uniquely American character and its development
parallels that of our own fledging nation.”
Ceresi continued, “Early
settlers and immigrants brought rounders, cricket, 'stool ball,' 'old cat' and
'goal ball' to our shores, all of which lent themselves in one way or another to
the formation of what became 'baseball' in 18th century America.”
Among
Ceresi's recent writings is a detailing of what is being termed as the
Pittsfield find among historians and academics. The Pittsfield find refers to a
discovery by baseball historian John Thorn and former major league baseball
player Jim Bouton. In an ever-exhaustive effort to find the most exacting
earliest reference to baseball, Thorn and Bouton uncovered a 1791 bylaw from a
small-town courthouse. In the quiet town of Pittsfield in western Massachusetts,
the two baseball aficionados found a statute among other musty centuries-old
records that sought to protect windows in the new town meeting house by
prohibiting anyone from playing “baseball” within 80 yards of the
building.
Framed in the proper historical perspective, this newly
discovered reference to the game of baseball was written by the Pittsfield town
elders only four short years after the United States Constitution was written.
With the find in Massachusetts and the card discovery in Maine, experts are
readily confirming that the histories of the sport and our nation are woven
together like the threads of a baseball.
“The Card” was first on exhibit
as part of the Smithsonian Institution's presentation of “The Greatest Baseball
Stories Never Told: Origins of a National Pastime” on July 14, 2005. That
evening, Ceresi moderated a panel discussion joined by the aforementioned John
Thorn, an early-baseball expert and commentator on ESPN and the History Channel;
Tom Shieber, curator of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and David
Block, author of Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game.
Hank Thomas was also in attendance.
Editor's Note: Messrs. Thomas,
Keating, and Ceresi are available for radio, television, and print interviews.
Reporters wishing to request an interview may call (703) 522-5549. They may also
email Thomas J. Ratcliff at e-mail protected from spam bots.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/7/prweb267494.htm