UCI Student Wins Rare Invitation to Pitch Her Research at the Baseball Hall of Fame

Imagine a baseball player, bat in hand, stuck in the middle of one of Frederic Remington's iconic paintings of the Wild West. It's not much of a stretch, according to an analysis of more than 400 baseball cards from the 1890s.

Research by UC Irvine undergraduate EvaMarie Rodriguez suggests that striking similarities between the poses of baseball players and paintings in the late 19th century provide insight into America's ideals of masculinity at the time.

The finding has earned her a trip to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., to present at the 17th annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, June 8-10. Rodriguez is the only undergraduate presenter this year, and just the third in the symposium's history.

A senior with a double major in history and art history, Rodriguez used baseball cards to explore the image of masculinity that emerged after the Civil War when the game's popularity was growing, the American frontier was shrinking and the nation's peace was thought to be threatening the standards of manliness. Focusing on the "Old Judge Collection" of cards distributed with cigarettes between 1887 and 1890, Rodriguez found some of the players standing, sitting and sliding in poses identical to those in Remington's famous paintings of cowboys on the frontier -- bats and gloves replacing rifles and pistols.

"These players could have been cut and pasted out of the paintings, holding the weapon of their trade on the baseball field instead of the frontier," Rodriguez said. For example, the collection's card for player Billy Hamilton of the Kansas City Cowboys captures Hamilton holding a baseball bat in a pose remarkably similar to the way a central figure in Remington's "The Last Stand" carries his rifle.

Rodriguez contends that these are not intentional similarities but that together the images provide striking insight into how American masculinity was perceived through the art and sport of the time. Like the figures in the paintings, the players on the cards stand confident, usually with their shoulders squared to the viewer. Her analysis of the similarities is an extension of existing research showing how the language describing the game often echoes that of war, with words like "killing," "suicide play" and "retreat."

"We can look at earlier baseball cards as one of the many vehicles to provide insight into American society at the end of the 19th century," said Rodriguez, who is an avid baseball fan. "Because of their value in providing clues about society, baseball cards deserve to be treated with more respect. Too many people just equate baseball cards with money."

History professor Lamar Hill, who teaches a seminar on the history of the game explains, "She has taken something that is as much a part of everyday American life as baseball cards and done a cultural analysis -- the kind one might do to art or literature -- with some very surprising results."

"I'm honored and extremely excited to be an invited presenter at the symposium," Rodriguez said. "The Hall of Fame is hallowed ground to me, and I never dreamed I would go there in this capacity."

An uncommon topic for art historians, baseball cards have been a part of Rodriguez's life since childhood. Her father collected early cards and, when she was younger, he took her along to baseball collector's shows. Today, she is the mother of two boys, including a 12-year-old with cerebral palsy who is a dedicated player in the Little League Challenger Division.

Rodriguez previously presented her research at the UCI Undergraduate Research Symposium, and has received research and travel grants from UCI's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.

For more about the 17th annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, visit www.baseballhalloffame.org/library/symposium.

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