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Old 09-17-2008, 01:46 PM
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Default The First Baseball Card -- Latest Candidate

Posted By: CoreyRS.hanus

Putting aside the issue of whether it is a card, a ticket, some combination of the two, or something else (and in all fairness even though technically it does possess such characteristics as to allow one to reasonably argue it is a card, I do agree its ticket characteristics are more pronounced than its card characteristics), to me what is most significant about the item is that it identifies a never-before known baseball club playing what appears to be the modern game of baseball before the modern rules were formally codified. Historically, to those of us into that sort of thing, it is extraordinary. It is concrete evidence that the 20 rules the Knickerbockers codified in 1845 (baseball's ten commandements) reflected in substance a game already being played at Elysian Fields, not only by the Knicks but apparently now also by a least one other club (the Magnolia's). That coupled with the item being the first known illustration of baseball more or less as we know it today is what makes it so special, much more whether it should be characterized as the first baseball card.





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