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Friday, February 8, 2013

1865 Brooklyn Baseball Team Looks Like 2013 Dodgeball Team

Posted by on Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 12:15 PM

brooklynbaseball.jpg
A 148-year-old mounted photograph of The Brooklyn Atlantics, an amateur baseball club, sold at auction earlier this week for $92,000, the Post reports. Bidding started at $10,000. The "baseball card" is actually a proto-baseball card: it's a photo of nine players and their coach mounted on a piece of cardboard, what the Library of Congress (which owns the only other known copy) calls "the first dated baseball card, handed out to supporters and opposing teams in a gesture of bravado from the brash Brooklynites, who were dominant and won their league championships in 1861, 1864 and 1865," the Post reports. The card was discovered at a yard sale in Maine.

The players are mostly mustachioed, their short, stylish haircuts handsomely pomaded, while their coach wears a Whitmanesque beard and a long, dark coat. I think I saw these guys practicing in McCarren a couple of weeks ago? Or maybe it was their great grandsons.

Follow Henry Stewart on Twitter @henrycstewart

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About The Author

Henry Stewart

Henry Stewart
Bio:
 Henry Stewart is the Culture Editor at The L Magazine and some kind of editor at Brooklyn Magazine. He has always lived in Brooklyn.

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