Baseball’s 1st Home Run King – In Color

This is an 1889 Goodwin A35 Round. The lithographic piece is circular and is about 8″. I designed and created an acrylic holder with a pullout tray for easy access to it. The holder serves as a way to both display the awkwardly round piece and hide damage near the hole on the left where it was strung together as an album.

 

Featuring the finest in 19th century baseball color lithography, this piece is drenched in baseball history. Depicting some members of the team, the New York Giants were fresh off an 1888 Championship win, and were on their way to do it again in 1889.

 

The bottom right gentleman is named Roger Connor. If you’ve never heard of him, you aren’t alone – he isn’t too terribly well known given that no footage exists of him playing. His name enjoyed a resurgence not when Ruth broke his record, but rather in 1974 when Hank Aaron passed Babe Ruth. People suddenly began asking: Babe Ruth had once broken the all-time home run record himself – but whose record had he broken?

 

It was Roger Connor. “Dear Old Roger” as they’d call him, and it wasn’t until 2 years after Aaron broke the Babe’s record that Connor was elected into the Hall of Fame.

 

Standing 6’3, he towered over the average man (which back then was 5’6) he is credited by many as likely the inspiration for the New York Gothams to change their name to the Giants. Another fun fact – he also hit the first ever Grand Slam!

 

Connor has a minuscule number of cards issued for him, and this just might be the only full color rendering of him we have that is drawn off of his actual photograph.

 

For a man who played before motion pictures or full color photography could preserve him for us, that distinction is pretty special.