James Cummins Bookseller

Philadelphia: Holmes & Co, 1869 [copyright date].

Price: $8,500.00

About the item

Lithographed throughout by F. Van Horn. 32pp., comprising 16 lithographed baseball-themed humorous cartoons with ads on verso, the ads printed in blue or green ink. 8vo. Publisher's green lithographed wrappers, upper wrapper nearly detached. Not in Grobani.

Item #346497

The plates comprise:
[1] Base Bawler [a crying girl smashing a doll and drum]
[2] Pitcher [a man being thrown out a window with a broken pitcher on the ground beneath him]
[3] Batter [a chef with a large mixing bowl attempting to hit a flying bat with his spoon]
[4] Catcher [an overweight police officer chasing a woman]
[5] Out Field [two men climbing through a wooden fence being chased by a bull]
[6] First Base [a man playing a cello]
[7] Second Base [a second man playing a cello]
[8] Third Base [a man playing a bass drum]
[9] Home Run [a Civil War officer with sword running toward Washington]
[10] Fly Catch [a young girl standing on a chair trying to catch a fly]
[11] Out on a Fly [two men standing by a water pump, one with his arm on the other]
[12] Short Stop [a man on the ground with his legs spread apart holding a broken rope]
[13] Scorer [a man drinking at a bar with the bar tender chalking on the wall his drinks]
[14] Matches between Clubs [two baseball bats leaning against an oversized box of matches]
[15] Innings [man on ice skates falling through the ice on a lake]
[16] Fowl Ball [a bird hatching from a rounded egg]

We can find only a single example of this baseball-themed book of cartoons located at the American Antiquarian Society (with the upper wrapper trimmed and the wrapper and each plate mounted within a scrapbook, dated by AAS circa 1870 based on newspaper clippings within the scrapbook).