The Futility Infielder

When I was little, I loved to draw. My father brought home endless supplies of scrap paper from his office, the pulpy real estate with which I could build my dreams, or least decorate the refrigerator. I drew cars, planes, houses and colorful circus scenes. But once my interest in baseball was kindled, I had a new focus for my masterpieces.

I have a vivid memory of one such drawing done during the 1978 season, when my consciousness of the game advanced from a backyard amusement to a daily scouring of the box scores. In pencil, I drew a scene of a ballgame, and instead of rendering it horizontally or vertically, I ran a diagonal line from corner to corner and used that as my horizon. At the center was a pitching mound adorned with Dodger reliever Terry Forster. The portly portsider's ample gut protruded over his waistline, emphasizing the number 51 on the lower left corner of his jersey, while his hair curled out from behind his cap.

I don't remember the other details of the drawing as vividly. I'm sure the batter, catcher and umpire were present and accounted for, and that a scoreboard could be seen in the distance. At eight years old, I had no knowledge of perspective, so with my primitive hand it all must have been a mess. But at a time when I felt a need to express my growing passion for the game, drawing was my outlet for communicating that passion.

That impulse, that need to communicate one's love for the game by any means necessary, is a major part of a new exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City. The Perfect Game: America Looks at Baseball collects a wide variety of artwork and objects created by fans of all stripes, as well as an impressive collection of baseball-related curios. Viewers who come to this exhibit having seen the Hall of Fame's traveling Baseball as America roadshow (late of New York, L.A., and Chicago, opening next week in Cincinnati) will notice some crossover between the two -- a Civil War-era lithograph here, a colorful spinner game there -- but make no mistake, this show has different aims.

Folk art, to use curator Elizabeth V. Warren's definition, generally refers to "objects made by artists who were either self-taught... or were trained in a continuing cultural artistic tradition by other practitioners of the art." The pieces in The Perfect Game run the gamut from drawings, paintings, and photos to quilts, embroideries, castings, sculptures, carvings, even grass rollings (no, not that kind of grass; we're talking photos of the patterns rolled in the Fenway Park outfield). They've been chosen not for their value as masterpieces -- indeed, some of these are fairly crude -- or as memorabilia -- though some of them would fetch a pretty penny -- but for the way they express their connection to a shared heritage. Signage, arcade and carnival games, scorecards, weathervanes, and even a frieze from the original Yankee Stadium, not to mention plenty of bats and balls, are on hand to represent the vernacular culture from which such expressions drew.

One of the most prominent pieces of the exhibit is a 7' x7' quilt called "My Favorite Baseball Stars," created by Clara Schmitt Rothmeier, the daughter of a minor league ballplayer. (This photo of the quilt and the other photos I link to for this article were generously provided by Susan Flamm of the AFAM for the purposes of this review). Over a ten-year period from the mid-Fifties to the mid-Sixties, Rothmeier drew pictures of her favorite players, traced them onto fabric, appliquéd and embroidered each one, then sent them to the players for their autographs. Once a panel was returned, she would add it to her quilt, embroidering the signature as well. Midway into the project, she added a border of cloth baseballs, each featuring another signature that she'd collected. The finished quilt contains forty-four panels and about three hundred autographed balls. There are some heavy hitters among those portrayed: Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Casey Stengel, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Robin Roberts, Al Kaline, and a sleeveless Ted Kluszewski. Among the signed and embroidered balls are even more legends: Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Jimmie Foxx, Frankie Frisch, Dizzy Dean, Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige, "Cool Papa" Bell, Bob Gibson, and Sandy Koufax. Yeah, some of those guys could play ball.

Another favorite of mine is a series of nine embroidered portraits commemorating the 1963 World Champion New York Yankees. These portraits were done in 1993 by a prisoner named Ray Materson who was serving time for armed robbery. What's amazing is that the material Materson used to create these intricate full-color illustrations was unraveled sock and shoelace thread. Each portrait is 2.25" x 2.75", contains about 1,200 stitches per square inch, and took about 50 hours to complete. Shown here is the Mickey Mantle one.

The item which originally drew my attention to this exhibition was a baseball from a batch painted by a minor league umpire named George Sosnak. To commemorate occasions such as an All-Star Game, a no-hitter, a Hall of Fame induction, or another historical occasion, Sosnak painted balls with India ink, covering every inch of their surface. A Sosnak ball generally features a colorful illustration of a player or scene on one face, a box score or career stats on another face, and a text summary or even a Hall of Fame plaque on another face. These detailed balls -- occasionally game-used, but more likely painted on the cheapest balls available -- are unique little collectors items, and Sosnak is estimated to have done 800 of them. Among the ones in The Perfect Game are balls commemorating Hall of Fame slugger Mel Ott, the inaugural season of the New York Mets, the 100th anniversary of the Brooklyn/L.A. Dodgers, the 500th and 501st home runs of Harmon Killebrew, Orlando Cepeda's 1967 MVP season, Dean Chance's short no-hitter, and the 1980 All-Star Game.

Not every item lives up to the lofty standards of these pieces, of course. A few seemed scarcely more skilled than my aforementioned drawing. But even the most primitive ones can evoke an emotional response. Among the numerous items paying homage to Jackie Robinson, a pair of paintings feature a misspelled "D-o-g-e-r-s" across the front of his jersey. Seeing this, I giggled momentarily, until I realized that these paintings were done by a septuagenarian named Sam Doyle who lived his entire life on a small South Carolina island that was once a refuge for freed slaves. In the face of Robinson's significance to a life like that, such trivial inaccuracies hardly matter.

The Doyle paintings weren't the only time I scolded myself for such a literal-minded response. Viewing a vivid painting by Ralph Fasanella called "Night Game—Yankee Stadium," I got hung up upon the incorrect, cookie-cutter-like outfield dimensions shown. Since when is the House That Ruth Built 350 feet down the rightfield line and 410 to center? Again, that's hardly the point of the painting, which contrasts the urban decay surrounding Yankee Stadium with the rich metropolis in the distance.

The determination of these artists to deliver their message by any means necesary is what carries the day here, not the precision of their details. If you're a fan living in New York City or planning to visit between now and February, you owe it to yourself to check out this exhibit.

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Ugh, the less said about Sunday afternoon's Yankees-Mariners game, which I suffered through, the better. I'm well-versed on the epic nature of the slugfests between these two teams, but this four-hour, nine inning affair -- which featured an hour-long seventh inning and a four-man bullpen implosion on the part of the Yanks -- is too grisly to recount at length. Go read somebody else if you insist upon knowing more.