Peachy at The Met: Legends of the Dead Ball Era (1900–1919) in the Collection of Jefferson R. Burdick July 8–December 1, 2013 Our Coverage Sponsored by Maine Woolens
Major League Baseball Teams, Fatima Cigarette Issue, 1913
New York Nationals
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection,
Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick, Album 246(T200)
Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
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White Borders, American Tobacco Company Issue, 1909-11
Honus Wagner
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection,
Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick, Album 246(T206)
Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
You almost feel like you're going to see cornfields and Kevin Costner coming around the corner. The Met built a great exhibit here, and you will come. A collector we met there told us the above of Honus is worth a cool couple million, partly because Wagner did not like cigarettes and wanted the card destroyed. Legends of the Dead Ball Era is simply the best exhibit we have seen at The Met in a long, long time. Its comprehensive dedication to Americana and Baseball itself is truly phenomenal, and they have got a lot of bases covered here.
Freyda Spira must be a genius-we've never met her but she should email us for an interview. Have you ever seen a baseball card that is 100 years old! We loved this collection for its history and its organization. Some are works of art-in 1909 we saw a series that was embossed in gold. We will warn you it is far in the back right corner of the Met on the mezzanine level-it not near the front door but it is worth the walk. What is more amazing is that this whole collection came from one person who donated it to the Met once he passed. You'll learn a lot about both baseball and advertising in America. Cracker Jack sponsored some we saw in 1914-15. New York Nationals, Boston Americans, apple pie, and YOU! Be there.
Zeenut Series, Home Run Kisses, Collins-McCarthy Issue, 1911
Patterson, Pacific Coast
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection
Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick, Album 315(E136-a)
Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The term “dead ball era” refers to the era of American baseball when the combination of
cavernous ballparks, spongy baseballs, and pitcher-friendly rules resulted in games with
few home runs. Strategy was important to the sport at this time, with great value placed
on individual runs, stolen bases, sacrifice bunts, and other maneuvers. Beginning July 8,
the exhibition Legends of the Dead Ball Era (1900–1919) in the Collection of Jefferson R.
Burdick, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will feature nearly 600 historical
trade cards of baseball greats from the time.
A highlight of the installation, which is drawn entirely from the Metropolitan’s renowned
and extensive holdings of such historical trade cards, will be a rare card from the T206
White Border series of Honus Wagner, who was a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates
from 1900 to 1917. Other well-known players from the dead ball era whose cards will be
shown include such luminaries as Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Eddie Collins, and Napoléon
Lajoie, who are still among the all-time hit leaders; and the pitchers Walter Johnson and
Christy Mathewson, who trail only the indomitable Cy Young in career wins.
During the dead ball era, it was not unusual for a single baseball to be used for an entire
(more)
game—sometimes until it unraveled. Because the path of a scuffed or damaged ball was
unpredictable and a dirty ball was hard to see, it became increasingly difficult to catch or
hit a ball as a game progressed.
By 1920, a series of changes in the game’s rules (as well as the rise of Babe Ruth, a power
hitter) ended the dead ball era. But during the e previous two decades, fans were treated to
some of the greatest players the game has ever seen.
All of the baseball cards on display are from the Jefferson R. Burdick collection, the
largest and most comprehensive collection of American trade cards ever assembled
privately in the United States. Burdick (1900–1963), an electrician by profession,
deposited more than 300,000 objects at the Metropolitan between 1943 and 1963,
including more than 30,000 baseball cards, for which he developed a cataloguing system
that remains in use today.
The installation is organized by Freyda Spira, Assistant Curator in the Museum’s
Department of Drawings and Prints.Since 1993, in response to the overwhelming enthusiasm of collectors and fans, the
Metropolitan Museum has put on display groupings of several dozen baseball cards at a
time from the Burdick collection, rotating them at six-month intervals. These installations
moved recently to a more prominent location within the Museum’s renovated Luce Center.
For the past two years, special exhibitions of Burdick materials—like the upcoming
Legends of the Dead Ball Era—have been punctuating the more standard rotations.
