McAleese, St. Louis, American League, from the White Border series (T206) for the American Tobacco Company 1909 - 1911

This small color lithograph of McAleese, a St. Louis baseball player, was made for the American Tobacco Company. Oh, the romance of bygone baseball! It looks like they used a creamy yellow for the background, and a kind of faded green for the grass. And look at McAleese’s uniform. It's this soft, muted blue, almost like it's been weathered by the sun and the sweat of the game. I wonder what the original artist was thinking when they made this? Was it just a job, cranking these out one after the other? Or did they feel a connection to the players, to the game itself? The artist probably didn’t have much room to make a mark, but you can see the care and attention to detail. The folds in his uniform, the way his cap sits on his head, it's all so carefully rendered. You can really see a history of image-making in these kinds of works!