Four Brothers Press, Image 12 - CARLI Digital Collections Featured Image

It's our national pastime, as American as apple pie--and also the sport that gifted us with the wit and wisdom of Yogi Berra. It's baseball!

(My qualifications to address this subject include having in the course of my lifetime viewed such films as A League of Their Own, The Natural, and The Bad News Bears. I can also correctly recite--not sing, never sing--almost all of the words to the chorus of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." Yeah, I got this.)

...

In the realm of Major League Baseball, I pledge no particular allegiance. Geographically, I should be a Cardinals fan. It's their divisional rival that's trending, however, and I'd be remiss if I didn't get hype, today of all days.

On this day in history (1908), the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. Searching the collections for a baseball-related image as remembrance, I found a surprising quantity and variety of old-timey team photos, and more than a few cute-kid-playing-ball pics as well. But little else said Cubs more literally than this 1984 lithograph by hometown artist Antonia Contro, now executive director of a nonprofit visual arts program for underserved middle to upper grade students, and one-time matchmaker for Rahm Emanuel.

It's been more than 70 years since the Cubs played in the Fall Classic, and even longer since they won it (see above). Tomorrow the 2016 team will be stepping up to the plate against the L.A. Dodgers in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series--one step closer to shaking the Curse of the Billy Goat, mayhaps. Should this be the year their record-breaking drought ends, it'll merit an exclamation stronger than Holy Cow!

Written by Ellen K. Corrigan, Associate Professor, Cataloging Services, Booth Library, Eastern Illinois University

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