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Posted By: bruce dorskind

Baseball at The New York Public Library

From March 25, 2003 through May 3, 2003
McGraw Rotunda (Third Floor)
Humanities and Social Sciences Library, 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788 (directions)


Honus Wagner baseball card, ca. 1910.
The New York Public Library, George Arents Collection on Tobacco, Goulston Collection
The Library's collections document the national pastime from its origins, in books, photographs, prints, clippings, drawings, scrapbooks, and other memorabilia. The Library's rare Honus Wagner baseball card will be on view. The legendary card was distributed with Sweet Caporal cigarettes, ca. 1910, until Wagner had it pulled from circulation. Speculation as to why abounded until his granddaughter set the record straight in 1992: "[H]e always had a wad of chewbacca in his mouth, and he wasn't against tobacco at all. His concern was he didn't want children to have to buy tobacco in order to get his card.... That's the fact behind it. It wasn't that he didn't get paid for it, or that he was against tobacco, he just didn't want children to have to buy tobacco at a young age in order to get his cards." The card and other baseball memorabilia are preserved in a scrapbook within the Goulston Collection, housed in the Library's George Arents Collection on Tobacco.