Though it somewhat evolved from an English game called rounders, and enjoys burgeoning popularity in Latin America, Asia and elsewhere abroad, baseball has long stood as a distinctly American pastime. Since the inaugural World Series in 1903, baseball evolved from a diversion to a national passion.
Many reasons exist for the game’s growth. Since antiquity, people have always watched in awe as athletes performed impressive feats of speed, strength and agility. Also, as people moved increasingly from rural communities into urban areas in search of better economic opportunities and broader horizons, baseball teams became easy sources of civic pride.
Further, professional baseball grew up virtually in tandem with mass media. Fans initially experienced their heroes through the dulcet tones of radio announcers, then via the “big screen” (both classic films, such as Gary Cooper’s Pride of the Yankees, and modern releases such as Kevin Costner’s Bull Durham, Field of Dreams and For Love of the Game) and, subsequently, TV, which proliferated increasingly as networks ceded control to ESPN and other cable networks. Of course, the role that stadia signage, billboards and other, off-premise media have played in promoting Abner Doubleday’s game shouldn’t be discounted.
Though the methods by which fans watch games and receive the information have changed, memorabilia’s role as a touchstone to the game’s great players and accomplishments hasn’t waned. Cooperstown, NY’s Baseball Hall of Fame, which opened in 1939, captures the game’s tradition and legacy while synthesizing it with a vision for its future. In honor of this year’s induction ceremony, which takes place July 27, a sampling of the Hall’s exhibit graphics may inspire you to hum the tune of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”