Baseball As America

From the Tour: On the Road With Baseball As America

Not for the Scrap Heap

by Erik Strohl,
Baseball As America Curatorial Committee Member

(Article originally published in Memories and Dreams — Winter 2004)

“The Base Ball World of 1912” scrapbook by Alan and David Jackman.

Every day, hundreds of thousands of fans visit major league stadiums, watch baseball highlights on TV, or follow the game on the Internet. For many, the hometown team’s daily box score is as much a part of breakfast as a cup of coffee. Fantasy baseball even allows fans to compete with one another as “baseball managers,” drafting teams made up of real major-leaguers. Kids, too, take part in these ritual activities, whether it is the more time-honored collection of baseball cards or the playing of a new video game.

An obsession with the game by fans of all ages is nothing new. Ever since baseball was adopted as the National Pastime in the 19th century, fans have turned players into cultural icons and developed ways to connect themselves with the game. One form of idolization, however, has dwindled into obscurity: the baseball scrapbook.

Once a popular keepsake, scrapbooks were a way to preserve baseball memories and record team or player histories. Countless hours were spent clipping newspaper stories and photographs, carefully pasting them into blank books as a way of recounting historic events. Today, where baseball information is available at one’s fingertips, baseball scrapbooks have largely been ignored as a method of chronicling the game.

Of the hundreds of baseball scrapbooks in the Hall of Fame Library archive, a very special one was chosen to travel on tour with the Museum’s Baseball As America exhibition. This scrapbook, created by brothers David and Alan Jackman of Pittsburgh in 1912, is one of the finest examples of its kind. The scrapbook’s story begins around 1901, when the brothers began cutting out images of ballplayers from newspapers and baseball guides. Initially, the brothers used these cutouts to play a baseball dice game of their own creation (certainly a predecessor to the video games of today).

By 1912, the Jackman brothers had collected over 1,500 images of ballplayers in various action poses: hitting, throwing and fielding. Soon to depart for college, the Jackman boys decided to organize the images into a scrapbook. Alan stated, “We had each team and anybody playing ball at the time, both major and minor leaguers, even some college players. We made a complete index for it (scrapbook), and carefully followed the players through their careers. If they were traded or went to the minors, we made notation of it.”

If the scrapbook were not impressive enough, the brothers decided to go for the “icing on the cake” by attempting to get signatures from as many players as possible. “We went to Forbes Field,” said Jackman, “which was the Pirates’ park then. The book was sort of a pass for us; they let us in free. Then we went from one bench to the other getting all the signatures. Only one player ever refused us. Overall, we had about 400 players sign, some more than once. We also went to get American League signatures in Cleveland. We ended up with almost all the major league players. Living in Pittsburgh, [Honus] Wagner was always a particular favorite of ours. He wrote a treatise in the front part of the book and signed it.”

The Jackmans traveled to Detroit to collect the final few autographs they sorely needed. As Alan recalled later, “We had all the Detroit signatures, but Ty Cobb hadn’t arrived for the game yet. He didn’t go to practice, you know. He’d always come in at the last minute, in his uniform, park his Chalmers car which he’d been given for winning the batting championship, and go out on the field. He drove in that day as usual. And he not only signed one picture, he signed four times. He held up the game about 10 minutes for us.”

In all, more than 460 signatures grace the pages of the Jackmans’ scrapbook, including those from more than three dozen Hall of Famers: Cobb, Wagner, Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, John McGraw, and Grover Cleveland Alexander among them.

Today, we are far removed from the era when an autograph scrapbook earned free entry not only into the park, but also into the dugout. And while the art of baseball “scrapbooking” may be nearly dead, this artifact, the creation of which began more than 100 years ago, evokes the heart and passion that fans still have for the game.