Smithsonian Baseball: Inside the World's Finest Private Collections - Softcover

Wong, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061121215 ISBN 13: 9780061121210

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2007

Synopsis

Among the national treasures you'll find:

• The only known photographic image of baseball's first organized team, the New York Knickerbockers, circa 1846.
• Original copy of the first written rules of modern baseball.
• One of the earliest known color advertising posters promoting the very first set of baseball cards, released in 1887.
• Scorecard from the inaugural World Series in 1903.
• Shoeless Joe Jackson's rookie-era game-used bat.
• Game-worn jerseys of Ty Cobb, Dizzy Dean, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig, Lefty Grove, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, and Ted Williams.

About this title

About the Author:

Stephen Wong, a lifelong collector of rare and historically significant artifacts, spent two and a half years researching his top-selling adult book smithsonian baseball: Inside the World's Finest Private Collections. Wong has advised a number of the world's top collectors and is currently lending his expertise to an upcoming exhibition at the Chicago Historical Society celebrating the glory days of Chicago Cubs and White Sox baseball in the early twentieth century. He is also an advisory director for the Museum of the City of New York's summer 2007 exhibit "The Glory Days: New York Baseball, 1947-1957" and an honorary committee member for the city of Pittsfield and the Berkshire Museum's "1791—Art of the Game—Pittsfield," a two-year celebration of Pittsfield's unique place in baseball history. A graduate of Stanford Law School, Wong is currently an executive director at Goldman Sachs. He was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and now lives in Hong Kong.

From Publishers Weekly:

Readers who want to see Mickey Mantle's uniform from the 1968 season, Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball from 1998, or a Satchel Paige autographed glove will find them among scores of treasures in this oversized book, vividly illustrated with color photographs of the most exceptional private baseball memorabilia collections, many of which contain items that have not been seen in public for decades. More than simple eye candy for the baseball fetishist, the book includes thoughtful essays that delve into collectors' backgrounds, introducing the reader to an array of people, their quirks and their motivations for collecting. Some of the collectors are well known: one chapter is devoted to the collection of Todd McFarlane, creator of the comic book character Spawn; another displays the baseball folk art collection of Penny Marshall-Laverne of Laverne and Shirley and the director of the baseball movie, A League of Their Own. Others are more ordinary people who have been blessed with the dedication and means to take their passion for baseball to an extraordinary level. Wong, a lawyer and baseball historian, places the artifacts in social and historic context as he conveys the arcane but captivating knowledge gathered by these collectors, who are authorities on obscure details like the model numbers of bats. This book is fine companion for baseball enthusiasts looking for something to tide them over during those long winter days between the World Series and spring training.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0061121215
• ISBN 13: 9780061121210
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296