Baseball's history is in the cards

Baseball cards weren't always glossy, full-color photos of favorite players, with statistics and holograms on the back. When cards were first introduced about 115 years ago, they were tiny cardboard tags showing a professional player posing in front of a painting of a baseball field, with a ball hanging from a string to make it look like an action shot. It sounds cheesy, but a rare card like that would be worth $1 million or more today.

Back then, baseball cards were tucked into cigarette packages. Over they years, they have been paired with candy, cookies, gum, cereal, hot dogs, potato chips, ice cream, Cracker Jack, even dog food -- all in an effort to get people to buy products.

The baseball card written about in the book "Honus & Me" is one of the most famous cards in history. Why? Because it's very rare -- there are only 58 cards in circulation, according to the Society for American Baseball Research.

Some historians say that the Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop didn't like being associated with cigarettes, so he asked for his card to be removed from the packages. Other people say that he just wanted to get more money from the companies to use his photo. As a result, the card is worth a lot of money; two years ago, a mint-condition card sold on eBay for more than $1.1 million.

The look of baseball cards in general has changed many times. The first cards were about the size of your wallet-size school photo and were simple lithograph pictures. In the early 1900s, a tobacco company made giant cards that were nearly 6 inches by 8 inches, available only through mail order. Another type of card, from 1938, shoed players with big heads on little cartoon bodies.

In the 1950s, there was a lot of competition and development in baseball cards. Two companies -- Bowman and Topps -- battled to become the biggest maker. Topps, which makes Bazooka Bubble Gum, made a set of 407 cards in 1952 -- then the largest set ever released -- and included players' statistics. The next year Bowman produced cards with full-color photographs for the first time. (Topps prevailed, buying out Bowman a few years later.)

Professional card dealers started operating in the 1970s, and card shows sprung up where collectors could buy and sell old cards.

An number of companies began competing with Topps in the 1980s, and now dozens of baseball sets are produced each year. In addition, there are card sets for hockey, football, basketball, golf and even for TV shows such as "Star Trek," "The X-Files" and "Animaniacs."

BATTER UP

Here are other recommended books about baseball.

"Winners Take All," by Kidspost sports columnist Fred Bowen: Did 12-year-old Kyle cheat during a game? Baseball history might have some answers for him.

"America at Bat" by Paul Rosenthal: The story of the game told with pictures and objects from the Baseball Hall of Fame.-- The Washington Post