Keeler, New York, American League, from the White Border series (T206) for the American Tobacco Company 1909 - 1911

This baseball card of Keeler, from the American League, New York, was made by the American Tobacco Company, and is from their White Border series. The colors are simple, like a printer's palette, and the figure is defined by flat areas of color, with none of that fancy shading. What I love about this card is its simple, direct construction, a commercial image, but one that feels hand-wrought, almost like a folk portrait. Look closely and you can see the stippled texture of the printing, especially in the background, which gives the whole image a kind of buzz. And then there is the color: the pink in Keeler's cheeks, the creamy white of his uniform, the way the olive green background makes those colors pop! The colors remind me of Alex Katz's palette, and how he finds the extraordinary in the everyday. It's not just a picture, it's a whole feeling.