no. 45
SELECTED BYMARK LAMSTERJOHN M. WARD BASEBALL CARD, 1887DESIGNERUNKNOWN
Like so many boys, my first prolonged exposure to a piece of graphic design came in the form of baseball cards. These nonfunctional objects are pure works of design, and even in my adolescent years, I had a tendency to evaluate them as such. While I always put a premium on acquiring star players from my favorite Yankees, I also went out of the way to pick up cards and sets that I found visually compelling, immersing myself for hour after hour in their every typographic and compositional detail.
A few years ago, after writing a book on the early history of the sport, I picked up a facsimile of the first great baseball card, an 1887 John M. Ward, one of ten baseball ...
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