A Home Run, from the Talk of the Diamond set (N135) issued by Duke Sons & Co., a branch of the American Tobacco Company 1888

Editor: This is “A Home Run, from the Talk of the Diamond set,” created in 1888 by W. Duke, Sons & Co., a branch of the American Tobacco Company. It's a colored-pencil print. I’m struck by how it presents baseball; it's both celebratory and kind of silly. What do you make of this work? Curator: It presents an interesting dichotomy. Look closely. On the left, you see the idealized baseball player, cleanly rendered. But towards the center and right, the imagery shifts. The child disrupting the game, and the rather… assertive woman… suggest something beyond a simple sporting scene. This "Home Run" speaks to cultural tensions. Do you see it? Editor: I think so. There’s a contrast between idealized sport and the realities of everyday life intruding. The caricatures seem to mock both the boy and the woman’s roles outside the baseball diamond. Curator: Precisely. Think of the symbolic weight of the “home.” The boy disrupts it. And consider the woman, with her stern look, wielding what appears to be knitting needles. It represents domestic order perhaps, threatened by this intrusion? Editor: So, it’s not just about baseball; it’s using baseball to say something about societal expectations. Curator: Absolutely. The baseball game then becomes a stage upon which social roles, expectations, and anxieties are played out. Note the line dividing the image into distinct social domains – that's charged with symbolic weight, isn’t it? Editor: It makes you wonder what was really considered important. This print offers us some valuable insights. Curator: Indeed. Images, even seemingly simple ones, become time capsules preserving not only how events looked but also how they felt to those who lived them.