Clarence Geoghan "Kid" Baldwin, Catcher, Cincinnati, from the Old Judge series (N172) for Old Judge Cigarettes 1888

Editor: This is a baseball card, titled "Clarence Geoghan 'Kid' Baldwin, Catcher, Cincinnati," part of the Old Judge series from 1888. It was produced by Goodwin & Company. It seems like a gelatin-silver print of a baseball player. What strikes me is the sepia tone and how staged the pose feels. What can you tell me about it? Curator: The sepia tone and the stiff pose are markers of the time, but it's more interesting to consider the baseball itself, held aloft like an offering or an orb of power. This small card, distributed with Old Judge cigarettes, presents Baldwin almost as a mythological figure, a hero captured in a moment of suspended action. Doesn't that gesture, that holding of the ball, remind you of religious iconography? Editor: An offering? That’s interesting. I was just seeing it as an awkward pose. I hadn't thought about any sort of symbolic significance. So you’re saying the cigarette card becomes like… a portable icon? Curator: Precisely! The act of holding the ball becomes an invocation. We have this young man, on the cusp of athletic prowess, embodying something larger than himself, and larger than baseball even. A symbol of American identity at that time. Editor: Wow, I never would have looked at a baseball card that way. It really changes how you see the image. It feels more…important now. Curator: Think about the company producing it – "Old Judge Cigarette Factory" – intertwining the act of consumption with ideals of athleticism and masculinity. They are imbuing this object, this baseball card, with cultural and psychological meaning far beyond just a picture of a baseball player. What did you discover? Editor: Seeing the baseball as an offering, a symbol... It really made me rethink what these kinds of images meant in their own time, and what they continue to represent. Curator: Exactly! We can learn to discern symbols of the era and see into the hopes, anxieties and cultural obsessions of that moment in time, reflected in how the most popular sports figure was seen.