Introduction for Cardhound Vintage
This spring, I had the opportunity to take a course titled “On Paper.” The focus of the class was simple enough: to “explore the history of paper as an introduction to human innovation and the global humanities.” While initially seeming like an extensively broad topic, the course was enjoyable and physically engaging—as we made our own paper, visited local print shops, and met important people in the paper community across our city. For our final project, we were all tasked to assemble and present research on a topic of our choosing related to paper while also correlating that given topic with a “medieval” precursor due to our professor being a specialist in Middle English literature and to further ground our research in the historical rather than the contemporary.
Many of my great classmates and good friends explored topics such as maps, zines, fan-fiction, collages, and even Russian iconography. I bounced all over the place when deciding on a topic. I initially wanted to focus on propaganda posters from World War II, and then I leaned towards comic books with a focus on Classics Illustrated, which are very dear to me. After a while, I landed on the topic of baseball cards for several reasons. The first of these is that completing the paper aligned on my calendar with the start of the MLB season, which I knew would take up a large portion of my free time.
The second reason is that, quite simply, baseball cards are beautiful and strange; the idea that colored pieces of cardstock depicting people playing a game on a diamond of grass and dirt garner such high value and public attention is admittedly fascinating. The final reason for pursuing this topic was my experience in Reno, Nevada, with my friend Nate Hertweck. I met Nate several years ago at a casino, Eldorado. While not usually the place you’d discuss theories about reading, writing, and how we approach text, Nate referred me to an article by linguist Mary Louise Pratt in which she argues for baseball cards as functional academic and teaching tools. Nate sent me the article, and I was immediately struck by what baseball cards can teach and do for us.
Through this article, I hope readers will appreciate from a new perspective that baseball cards are not simple pieces of paper. In fact, baseball cards are, as I put as my thesis, “the most functionally flexible collectible artifact of American culture that started on paper, stayed on paper, and will continue on paper, continuously preserving the sport known as America’s national pastime.” Not to get too preachy about baseball as a cultural cornerstone, but baseball history is American history. Within that American history, much of it throughout the past 150 years has been told through the mythical pieces of cardboard known as baseball cards.
Baseball Cards: Paper that Endures
The lifecycles of baseball players are simple: they swing bats made of ash, throw balls made from cork, rubber, and yarn, and field those balls with a glove made from leather. If they perform any of those actions at a high level over an extended period, they are rewarded with a sizeable paycheck as a 2 ½” x 3 ½” colored photograph of themselves made from glossy cardstock circulates across memorabilia stores, auction houses, supermarkets, and hobby shops across the country. While the rest of America relies on screens and modern technology, the baseball card remains on paper in an increasingly paperless world. Whether as a sidekick to tobacco sales, depicting forgotten moments in baseball history—such as when Michael Jordan pursued a career in the MLB—or preserving the history of bygone athletes across baseball’s nearly 170-year lifespan, such as the first openly gay MLB player, Glenn Burke, and his teammate Dusty Baker, who are known as the creators of the high-five, or Herb Washington, who will always be known as the only designated pinch runner in history, the baseball card has become just as prominent as the sport it documents, and in some cases, even more so. Despite attempts to alter the basic form and creation of the product, the baseball card is the most functionally flexible collectible artifact of American culture that started on paper, stayed on paper, and will continue on paper, continuously preserving the sport known as America’s national pastime.
According to sports journalist Joe Posnanski, the origins of the baseball card in America go back “more or less to the start of professional baseball,” as there were “various cards celebrating baseball even before the 1869 Cincinnati Redlegs became the first openly professional team.” He further explains, “Recognizable baseball cards—photographs of Major League Baseball players on cardboard that you can trade or flip or put in the spokes of your bicycle—began ten or so years after the birth of the National League.” While baseball cards as we know them are often cited as first appearing as tobacco or cigarette accompaniments, in Paper: Paging Through History, Mark Kurlansky notes in the 1880s, “two different sets of cards with pictures of seventy-two leading baseball players were produced, one in Boston and one in New York,” which to him signifies “the first appearance of baseball cards.” Several sources identify earlier forms of baseball cards in America, such as the 1865 Brooklyn Atlantics carte de visite—a team photograph mounted on cardstock as a souvenir—and the 1868 Peck and Snyder Trade Cards, which featured cartoonish depictions of early baseball players on teams such as the Cincinnati Red Stockings.
However, depictions of baseball on cards appeared decades before, even if these early versions lacked player statistics or relation to cigarettes and bubble gum. In a specific instance, baseball historians Hank Thomas, Frank Ceresi, and Kevin Keating showcased what is believed to be the earliest known baseball card at a Smithsonian Institution symposium in 2005 focused on trading card history. The particular card appears to have been part of a children’s game; Thomas suggests it dates back between 1800 and 1830, a period when baseball was gradually developing into America’s national pastime. The illustration on the card depicts a boy pitching a ball toward another child holding something resembling a bat while an additional boy stands near first base. The card’s caption reads, “Boys delight with ball to play.”
The 1865 Brooklyn Atlantics
Historical Precursors and Early Baseball Cards
The development of the baseball card did not occur by chance in the late 19th century; in fact, cultural precursors existed for centuries in various formats, but most notably with holy cards. Typically illustrating Christian saints, biblical scenes, or religious images on one side, holy cards are small devotional items followers use for personal meditation or inspiration, usually including a prayer or message on the reverse side. Traditionally printed on paper or cardstock, they are sometimes laminated for durability and better portability. Along with this durability, much like baseball cards, holy cards are popular collectible items, as they are small, inexpensive, and stored in similar places baseball cards might—such as plastic sleeves, display stands, or binders. The spiritual relation to a seemingly simple piece of paper did not exist solely through holy cards; throughout history, baseball cards instilled a similar effect in collectors, leading the coveted nature of specific cards to feel like “holy relics” of their time.
Most popular in Catholic countries and dating back to as early as 1423 with a woodcut of St. Christopher, according to religious traditions, holy cards possess talismanic properties akin to good luck charms—similar to the way some carry a lucky playing card or a card of their favorite baseball player. Historically, holy cards have been printed on various materials, including inexpensive paper, wood, parchment, vellum, silk, and copper. However, when holy cards became popular again in the 19th century, they were printed on paper using the multi-color printing method of chromolithography commonly used in baseball cards of the same period.
Around this time, baseball cards appeared from tobacco companies such as Allen & Ginter from Richmond, Virginia, around 1880, and the American Tobacco Company from Durham, North Carolina, in 1890. The latter became known for their tobacco card set in 1909, T206. Perhaps more sought-after than any series of baseball cards in history, the typical T206 card is 1 7/16” x 2 5/8”, with minor variations due to differing printing methodologies.
The most commonly believed printing method of the T206 cards is a six-color lithograph process or flatbed offset lithography in which images are put onto a stone, wet inked, and then printed onto a rubber sheet, then printed onto paper. The flatbed offset method is cited as labor-intensive in contrast to the direct stone lithography method, in which an image is drawn or put down as a transfer to the stone to create a mirror of the desired image—or, in the case of tobacco cards, a baseball player.
More specifically, Brendan Boyd and Fred Harris call the early lithography creation of baseball cards “a fairly complicated process” in which images are placed “on square cardboard sheets—132 cards to each sheet—the back and the front of the same piece of cardboard” as “the sheets are cut and collated and sorted by a special machine,” which ensures “that each series receives a proper mixture.” This process routinely noted for being strenuous and outdated by modern standards, was of no significant importance at the time due to labor laws of the period and tobacco cards not being the sole reason for purchasing cigarettes in the early 20th century. Some scholars, such as Michael O’Keeffe and Teri Thompson, in their book The Card: Collectors, Con Men, and the True Story of History’s Most Desired Baseball Card, claim a function of early tobacco cards was to stiffen packs of tobacco, thus protecting cigarettes from bending or breaking during cross-country shipments. Others, such as Peter Devereaux, claim the cards within the pack of cigarettes were inserted with the intent to make children purchase tobacco through the enticement of a baseball card.
While American Tobacco’s release of T206 helped popularize baseball cards, the manufacturing process underwent many changes throughout the 20th century. Within these printing methodologies, the author of Baseball, Boobs, & The Babe, Nick Redwine, notes, “Given the millions of cards printed each year, it’s impressive to consider how few issues there are.”
Typically, baseball cards are printed on specialized cardstock: a thick, coated paper designed to endure handling and provide a sound surface for printing images and text. The type of cardstock for baseball cards is usually a coated 2-sided matte paper, providing a smooth finish with minimal sheen. Contrastingly, cardboard, which is significantly thicker and less flexible than cardstock, is well-suited for heavy-duty packaging; cardstock’s flexibility makes it ideal for crafting, printing, and producing items like business cards and invitation letters. While cardboard is robust and stiff, cardstock is a thicker and sturdier version of regular paper, which retains flexibility. Both materials are primarily made from wood pulp, with various additives to enhance durability and printing quality. Along with the material makeup, most modern baseball cards feature a matte coating to ensure a smooth look, minimize fingerprints, and reduce the chances of creasing or sun damage. According to David Cycleback’s article, “Not Always Cardboard: Unusual Materials Used to Make Trading Cards,” throughout the traditional history of baseball cards, they “have been made out of rectangular cardstock; in fact, the dictionary definition of card usually is a rectangular piece of cardstock or heavy paper.”
Cycleback also notes for over a hundred years, various companies experimented with materials, making baseball cards from silk, felt, tobacco cloth, leather issues, metallic pins, clear plastic, metal coins, and stickers—only to return to a cardstock support. Aside from the physical and material alterations, the existence and definition of the baseball card is best described as a 2 1/2” x 3 1/2” “collectible picture card depicting a baseball player, often including performance statistics and biographical information.”
American Tobacco’s circulation of T206 allowed baseball cards to be seen as “collectible,” with many collectors perceiving tobacco cards as art instead of simple novelties. Specific cards, such as the 1911 T3 Turkey Red baseball cards, were not simplistic lithographic printings of players or teams, such as the Brooklyn Atlantics carte de visite; instead, many of the baseball cards from the early 1910s were modeled after real photographs, which artists from the American Lithographic Company turned into action shots and artistic renderings with a pastoral quality akin to Edward Hopper paintings with dreamlike impressionist backgrounds of misty horizons and realist representations of players. Trey Treutel notes the T3 Turkey Reds—larger than the T206s but possessed similar artistic qualities—“are more a work of art than just some simple baseball card.” While the T3 Turkey Reds signify the artistic turn of baseball cards, the T206s indicate the turn of the baseball card as a lucrative and desirable product to be bought, sold, and traded, as the T206 series included famous players such as Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, and Cy Young—along with long-forgotten players whose legacies exist solely from cigarette cards like Bull Durham and Kid Elberfeld.
Bull Durham, 1909 T206
After the popularity of the T206s, caramel companies such as Rueckheim Bros. & Eckstein manufactured cards through boxes of Cracker Jacks, blurring the line between food products and baseball cards. Following the conclusion of World War I, the baseball card industry temporarily declined due to undeveloped foreign markets and the United States’ transition away from wartime manufacturing. During the early 1930s, an upsurge in the baseball card market occurred, beginning with the release of U.S. Caramel’s set in 1932 and Goudey Gum Co.’s renowned 1933 issue, which featured players such as Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, and Lou Gehrig. Departing from earlier decades’ modest designs focused on economy, the Goudey cards showcased vibrant hand-colored images on their fronts and biographical details—including height, weight, and place-of-birth specifics—on their reverse sides.
Aside from the popular artistic renderings, the most notable aspect of the Goudey series was that the set was the first to introduce a stick of gum as a bonus instead of tobacco. Quite large in comparison to other series of the time, the 240-card set included current players, former stars, and prominent minor leaguers. Individual cards measured 2 3/8” x 2 7/8”, which Goudey printed on 24-card sheets of thicker cardboard stock, making them sturdier than previous tobacco and candy cards. The 1938 Goudey series featured comical and artistic depictions of players instead of the realistic cards in 1933, with Joe DiMaggio, Hank Greenberg, and Dizzy Dean appearing with oversized photorealistic heads and cartoonish bodies of a smaller stature. Despite the rising prominence of baseball card collecting, the hobby and the sport faded with the advent of World War II.
After the baseball card industry took a hiatus from 1941 to 1947, the market returned with the release of the 1948 Bowman and Leaf series, restarting the demand for baseball cards and including players such as Stan Musial, Ted Williams, and Jackie Robinson. Several years later, the next step for baseball cards occurred when Topps’ 1951 series appeared in the shape of 2” by 2 5/8” playing cards, with specific player cards possessing “abilities”—such as the Phil Rizzuto card with a “double” and a Warren Spahn card with a “ball.” While the 1951 Topps series emitted a certain charm and gimmick for children, the most notable series of cards throughout the fifties, and perhaps of all time, came the following year with Topps’ 1952 series.
Warren Spahn, 1951 Topps
Revered as collector’s items of high value, 1952 Topps undersold at the time, leading many of the cards to be thrown away. Despite this, the 1952 Topps cards—artistically styled with nameplates lined with Hollywood-styled vanity lights representing post-war America’s prosperity and a slightly larger card size of 2 5/8” by 3 ¾”—included Hall of Fame players such as Eddie Mathews, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, and Mickey Mantle. With a style consisting of a combination of black-and-white photographs and hand-painted color reproductions resembling Norman Rockwell paintings, the series had several oddities, including Brooklyn Dodgers center fielder Andy Pafko, who was later featured in Don DeLillo’s “Pafko at the Wall.” Despite depicting a little-known player, the Pafko card rose significantly in value due to the coincidence of his card being No. 1 in the set and, therefore, the most likely to be exposed to damage.
A Changing Industry on Post-War America
The baseball card industry stabilized for the remainder of the 1950s and well into the 70s, with several companies taking advantage of a licensing scheme allowing smaller companies and food distributors to create cards of their own. In the 1980s and 90s, the industry experienced a boom driven by a surge in popularity among collectors and investors. During this period, cards were printed in massive quantities on cheaper, less durable, and thinner paper, diminishing their rarity and future value. In “Why Your Sports Cards from the Early 90s Are Worthless,” Ryan Cracknell states, “Everyone who wants a 1991 Upper Deck Baseball Michael Jordan has three of them. Even if they were just one per box, tons are out there. Literally. Today, they can be found for pennies on the dollar. This is the same with almost every sports card made between 1986 and 1992.”
Despite the industry crash, several innovations occurred during this period, as certain sets included game-used memorabilia lodged within the card to offer a tactile connection to the sport. In certain examples, a 2001 Fleer card of Paul Molitor includes a chunk of a stadium wall, a 2000 Topps Stadium Club card of Greg Maddux includes a capsule of “authentic game-used pitcher’s mound dirt,” and a 2007 Topps card of Barry Bonds includes a piece of a “home-run touched base.” Also occurring during this period and into the 2000s, certain card lines, such as Upper Deck’s Victory, MLB Showdown, and Topps’ Attax line, returned to the 1951 Topps line and the origins of baseball cards as playing cards with sets designed as a card game. Along with cards designed for a specific playing function, other series, such as Pacific’s 2000 Invincible Kings of the Diamond and inserts from Topps’ 2023 set, released cards in the shape of playing cards, with diamonds, spades, hearts, and clubs in the corners and rounded edges.
What Baseball Cards Teach Us
Coinciding with various cultural trends in periods of American history, baseball cards facilitate the artistic relationship between the player and the fanbase. Since they first appeared in cigarette packs, baseball cards perpetuated the idea of “cool” and “uncool.” For example, specific players such as Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox routinely had baseball cards printed of him complimenting his handsome movie-star-like face, relating him to celebrities such as Jimmy Stewart or William Holden instead of a simple baseball player. In contrast, certain players, such as Don Mossi, Pete La Cock, and Wally Moon, were given less-flattering photos, creating baseball cards children routinely put in their bicycle spokes.
Ted Williams, 1956 Topps
Through cards printed of a specific player over their career, an entire historical narrative of the sport appears through the conduit of the player as collectors see the variations occurring in fashion, facial hair, statistical evaluations, jerseys, biographical details, and broader cultural contexts. For example, when examining baseball cards for a player such as Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Steve Carlton, a near-literary connection materializes between collector or reader and player. Specifically, Carlton’s 1981 3-D Super Stars card includes a 138-word biography with dense statistical evaluations documenting the ups and downs across Carlton’s lengthy career. In another 1984 Topps card of Carlton, text on the back reads, “Marital Status: Married, wife Beverly, two sons” and “Interests: Wine collecting, an extremely strenuous work-out program.” In the year prior, Carlton’s Donruss Action All-Stars card notes his hobbies as wine collecting, classical music, and reading and includes more minute statistical information usually omitted—such as fielding average and pickoffs. Through the seemingly odd and personal details included on cards such as Carlton’s, collectors and children connect from a tactile perspective of reading on paper, creating a stronger bond with the player through their hobbies, hometowns, family life, and personality.
Steve Carlton, 1981 Kellogg’s
Further examples of this reading connection to baseball players occurred in the 1973 Topps series when every player card in the set included a photograph on the front and cartooned biographical particulars on the back. For players like Jack Hiatt, Gaylord Perry, Michael Jorgensen, Rick Monday, and George Foster, collectors and readers connect with the subject as the cards proudly state, “Jack collects baseball cards,” “In the off-season, Gaylord is a farmer,” “Mike has spent time in the Marines,” “Rick likes to go hunting in the off-season,” and “George likes to listen to music”—humanizing and realizing people who children consider heroes for simply athletic purposes. For a more literary connection between collector and player, previous releases, such as 1970 Topps, issued a set of graphic novel adaptations of players’ stories the same size as regular cards. Booklet No. 14 in the series tells the story of Chicago Cubs legend Ernie Banks in six multi-colored pages, romantically and fantastically depicting the story of one of the game’s most loved players.
Baseball Cards in the Classroom
Along with eliciting an active reader response, in “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Mary Louise Pratt writes how baseball cards developed her son Sam and his friend Willie’s skills as readers and learners. Through reading the biographical and statistical information on baseball cards, Sam and Willie learned about phonics by deciphering surnames on baseball cards as much as they learned about cities, states, heights, weights, places of birth, and stages of life. Pratt watched her son apply his arithmetic skills to working out batting averages and subtracting retirement years from rookie years while also watching him develop a sense of patterning and organization by arranging cards in various orders for hours on end. Pratt continues to note through reading and collecting baseball cards, Sam and Willie learned about America through the history of the Negro Leagues and segregation; geography through the cities where teams play; the economy with the understanding of market trends and card value; and statistics through the interpretation of player averages. Additionally, through socialization at collectible shows, Sam and Willie learned how to communicate, barter, and trade with adults and people from other backgrounds. Pratt also praises baseball cards as opening the door for Sam to books about baseball, introducing him to “shelves and shelves of encyclopedias, magazines, histories, biographies, novels, books of jokes, anecdotes, cartoons, even poems,” as he “learned the history of American racism and the struggle against it through baseball; he saw the depression and two world wars from behind home plate.”
Similar to how Pratt writes about the intellectual and social development of two children learning to appreciate the importance and versatility of the hobby, Dallas sports card aficionado Chris Olds writes in “Why Kids Should Collect Baseball Cards” that collecting cards with a family member is “a better way to spend your time than video games, the Internet, or anything like that. Baseball cards can give you a longer-lasting satisfaction and you can enjoy them with others. It’s also not dangerous, and there’s no negative influence on younger kids.” Olds continues to claim that cards improve academic skills, such as learning to understand complicated mathematical formulas from baseball, such as VORP (value over replacement player), WAR (wins above replacement), and WPA (win probability added). Furthermore, since humans, and especially children, comprehend text and information at a higher level on physical surfaces such as paper, the tactile relation between hand and paper facilitates a greater degree of reading comprehension as opposed to only reading on screens, allowing children to begin the decoding and phonetic understanding of complex names such as Mark Grudzielanek, Frank Catalanotto, and Jarrod Saltalamacchia.
Aside from aiding in reading comprehension and development, baseball cards hold further educational value, providing an early form of literary criticism and analysis within and outside the classroom. In a theoretical analysis of structuralism—when reading the text and analyzing the art present on the baseball card—students look at the individual parts of a baseball card to decode the “underlying patterns of signs, particularly in keywords, expressions, or images that reflect significant values, interests, or intentions.” A student may take a cultural studies approach through another lens to an individual card by exposing “the systems of meaning-making that create the worlds” a specific human, or baseball player, inhabits.
If a student studied a singular baseball card—such as the No. 3 card in Topps’ 2006 series of former Colorado Rockies third basemen Garrett Atkins—they might note from the deconstructive perspective how the colored frame around the photo of Atkins is purple and yellow instead of the Rockies team colors of purple and black. Through this, a student may posit whether this contradicting artistic decision occurred to create a more appealing presentation—since the logo at the top of the card is black—or if the artistic decision was no decision and perhaps an error. Students might make assumptions on the career trends of Atkins on the reverse side of the card, such as making inferences as to why Atkins spent time with the Rockies minor league team, the Colorado Springs Sky Sox, and the Rockies each year from 2003 to 2005, which could make a student ask why this happened: if he was hurt, underperforming, or if there was no space for him on the MLB roster.
On the reverse side of the card, a student may analyze another element, such as the cartoon in the upper-left-hand corner, which includes a depiction of a padded umpire reading, “1885 was when umpires first wore chest protection,” placing the card in hand within the larger context of baseball instead of a work of art independent from the sport. Conversely, looking at the 2006 Atkins from a lens of New Criticism, students might stay within the text and highlight the copyright language at the bottom of the card or the personal anecdote of Atkins, which includes a quote from the former player reading, “Garrett’s sweet swing is a treat to watch, but it’s very much a result of hard work,” allowing a student to infer as to what a “treat to watch” might mean if isolated from the context and jargon of baseball.
Garrett Atkins, 2006 Topps
In addition to the hobby affording children the ability to develop as readers and thinkers—through quantifying statistical evaluations and biographical particulars—the hobby also connects children with adults and family members who collect cards through hand-me-downs, teaching children how to protect paper and valuables properly. Card collecting teaches the preservation and care for baseball cards as children learn, usually through trial and error, how to store cards properly to protect them from water, sunlight, and other hazards in the same way one would care for a piece of art. In further instances blurring the line between hobbies, community, and education, Nick Redwine ran a promotion at his store in Richardson, Texas, where children were rewarded with a pack of baseball cards if they brought in a successful report card from school.
As teaching tools, baseball cards provide children, or anyone, with a surplus of information about the sport so entrenched in the history of America. Through reading cards, children learn about specific style trends from the exaggerated color waves in the 1980s just as much as they learn granular details of the sport, such as Ray Chapman, who was the only player killed during a baseball game, or about Eddie Gaedel, who at 3 feet 7 inches, was the smallest player to appear in a Major League Baseball game.
As an example, the most historically accurate baseball cards, the 1994 Upper Deck series Baseball: The American Epic, were released in conjunction with Ken Burns’ documentary, Baseball, as supplemental material for the film. Specifically, the No. 3 card in the series of Detroit Tigers center fielder Ty Cobb plainly states Cobb’s mother killed his father in 1905, the same month as his debut for the Tigers, and that in 1912, he assaulted a heckler who hurled a racial slur. The series also includes cards of the aforementioned Ray Chapman, as the card starts with “The Pitch That Killed” and Satchel Paige, which highlights obscure information on Negro League teams such as the Indianapolis Clowns, who “liked to warm up in pantomime.” In the same year Upper Deck released Baseball: The American Epic, the Conlon Collection released The Sporting News, a similar set filled with information on rarely documented players such as Archibald “Moonlight” Graham, whose card included a 308-word biography with references to Graham’s character portrayed by Burt Lancaster in Field of Dreams (1989).
While the sets from Conlon and Upper Deck document specific players and cultural cornerstones in American history, several series in previous decades functioned as direct news sources, introducing children and readers to the concept of learning about the daily news and history on paper. Specifically, the 1965 Fleer Season set documented noteworthy moments from every World Series across baseball’s history through whimsical drawings. Similar to the 1965 Fleers, in 2008, Upper Deck released Documentary, an ambitious series attempting to record every game played throughout the 2008 MLB season across 4890 cards—allowing children to recall and collect moments from games they attended or watched on television. In No. 2611 of the set, the card depicts a game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Pittsburgh Pirates in which “Left-hander Tom Gorzelanny had his second consecutive quality start, striking out a season-high eight batters.” Also a news source for baseball fans, cards document ongoing transactions, such as trades, retirements, and new signings. The 1974 Topps card for the Montreal Expos player Felipe Alou displays the notoriety of a player being traded via the modified labeling overlain upon the card, letting fans know the well-respected Dominican outfielder was headed to the Milwaukee Brewers. The card reads “Traded” in capitalized and bolded red text highlighted in yellow.
Along with the practical, statistical, cultural, and historical information, baseball cards function as an educational tool for children and readers to understand marketing, as many companies released baseball cards capitalizing on the cultural obsession to push their product. Companies such as Kraft, Kellogg’s, Squirt, Cap’n Crunch, McDonald’s, Burger King, Hostess, Post Cereal, Chef Boyardee, Red Lobster, and Jiffy Pop attempted to sell baseball cards at some point to place their product image in a place guaranteed for child engagement. In other instances, Jimmy Dean sold cards as a promotion for breakfast sausage, and Quaker Oats did the same by pushing granola bars. Along with food brands, toy companies such as Toys “R” Us and Kenner also released cards, with Kenner selling theirs alongside an action figure of the player depicted, letting children connect their toys to the information they read on paper.
At their best, baseball cards exist as underutilized and forgotten relics of print culture, which, if used correctly, enhance reading development and comprehension to facilitate cultural and historical understanding. Like any great novel or film, baseball cards add human elements to text, connecting fans with their heroes in the sport Walt Whitman once called “glorious.”
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