Baseball DIY

Local baseball enthusiasts have until April 24th to visit the Baseball as America exhibit at the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis. Produced by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, the exhibit’s nationwide tour brings fans in contact with artifacts and memorabilia that they might not otherwise get to experience.

I was lucky enough to get to go to the exhibit a few weekends ago with my wife and a couple of our friends. Even before entering the actual exhibit, we saw a glass case in the hall filled with examples of the different styles the St. Louis Cardinals uniforms have taken over the years. Another case demonstrated how baseball gloves have evolved from dainty to daunting, leaving it for the viewer to determine whether all of that leather really is necessary in Derek Jeter’s glove when Honus Wagner made do with much less. Throughout our visit, it proved impossible to view the past without comparing it to the present.

Of all the pieces in the collection, I was most affected by two letters addressed to Hank Aaron. The first, written in the 1970s, was a semi-literate, racist attack on Aaron, who, at the time, was approaching Babe Ruth’s career home-runs record. The letter’s handwritten hatred contrasted starkly with a letter typed in 2001 by a supporter of Aaron who wanted to thank him for all that he had endured and for all that he represented. These two pieces underscored the main idea of the exhibit: really, baseball is just a game that shouldn’t mean much to anyone other than the players, and even they should probably not think much about it when not actually playing it. Somehow baseball grew to such a magnitude that, thirty years ago, one man’s “pursuit” of a meaningless (in non-baseball terms) record carried great racial and cultural significance, which caused someone living two-and-a-half decades later to take a few minutes out of his life to write, address, stamp, and mail a letter about it. Baseball may be played within walls and baselines, but its psychological impact radiates oblivious to boundaries.

Other highlights of the exhibit include stadium seats from Forbes Field; baseballs autographed by Presidents, including William Howard Taft, the first President to throw out a “first pitch;” a letter from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt requesting that organized baseball continue play during World War II; a genuine Seattle Pilots cap (seriously, who remembers the Seattle Pilots?); various examples of improvised forms of baseball, particularly from military bases and internment camps; and a letter from then-Senator John F. Kennedy addressed to Jackie Robinson that contains at least one typo. The San Diego Chicken costume is also present.

If you take your time going through the exhibit (as you should, since it costs $8 for adults, $7 for seniors, $4 for students older than six years of age), you might find this one picture that I particularly liked. It’s tucked away in a display focused on the tools and methods of baseball trainers. The picture, featuring Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and a trainer or two, is not a posed shot; it’s doubtful that they even knew they were being photographed. Ruth is stretched out on a massage table getting a pre- or post-game rubdown, and Gehrig is seated next to him, possibly telling Ruth that if he took better care of his body he wouldn’t spend so much time on the table. Out of uniform, off the field, the two baseball deities look utterly human and normal. They’re not icons; they’re just a couple of guys who got caught up in baseball and went along for the ride.

Just like all of us.