“Baseball isn’t just a game. It’s life being played out on a field – a field of dreams – on diamonds of green, where players pursuing their dreams try to be the best they can be on the grandest stage of all ….” Tom Tatum
I come from a long line of baseball players and fans of the game. In celebration of the opening day of the 2022 season, here are three pieces of major league baseball-related vintage that bat a thousand with me.
Collection of Baseball Gloves and Masks c 1940s
What’s great about this: It’s an instant collection. Add one more and you’ll have a team of baseball gloves and catcher’s masks. And they’re from the 1940s which was a great decade for the game with MVPs like Stan Musial, Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio plus one of my personal heroes, Jackie Robinson, who integrated major league baseball with his debut in 1946 and was crowned the MVP in 1949.
Leroy Neiman “Babe Ruth” Original Baseball Artwork
What I like about this: Leroy Neiman, one of the great American expressionists, drew Babe Ruth on a baseball! What could be more fun than that? Only the fact that over the next three decades, Neiman drew on another 129 baseballs for his close friend, Charlie McCabe. Those baseballs included a drawing of Marilyn Monroe who was briefly married to Joe DiMaggio, one of the all-time great NY Yankees. The amazing part of this story is that McCabe’s one-of-a-kind baseball art collection, which began in 1978, sold at auction in 2014 for $491,798!
Stick Splatter Rabbitware Plate c 1900s
What makes it special: Need you ask? It’s bunnies playing baseball, for heaven’s sake. I have developed an appreciation for anthropomorphic vintage (thanks to my dear friend, Mary Ellen, of Aunt Hatties Vintage) and firmly believe this rare piece of folk art would be a major league addition to any transferware collection.
If you’d like to learn more about transferware in general, check out Stories to Tell: Collecting Classic Transferware. And while you’re at it, Laurie hit a home run with her transferware post: A Vintage Classic: Blue Willow china.
P.S. In case you missed the reference in the title of this post, if you’re a movie fan and haven’t taken in “A League of Their Own“, you’ve missed a great baseball story.
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