Rooks, Left Field, Chicago, from the Old Judge series (N172) for Old Judge Cigarettes 1888

This is "Rooks, Left Field, Chicago", a baseball card from the "Old Judge" series, made by Goodwin & Company in 1888. It gives us insight into the intertwined relationships between commerce, leisure, and the construction of celebrity in late 19th-century America. Consider the implications of a tobacco company producing images of athletes, and the commercial interests at play in the popularization of baseball. The card presents Rooks, a player for the Chicago Maroons, in a posed action shot, idealized and designed for mass consumption. These cards circulated widely, tucked into cigarette packs, serving as both advertisement and collectible. To understand the nuances of this image, one might delve into archival research on the Goodwin Company, explore the history of baseball as a burgeoning national pastime, and study the visual culture of advertising in the Gilded Age. It is through this detailed contextual work that we can understand how the image mediates social values.