Thank you very much. The beverages are still here, so you may enjoy one another. Our photographer has a few photos to take. Thank you so much. Each week museums, Historic Sites around the country. Next library of congress in washington, d. C. , to learn about baseballs origins and early days. Welcome to the library of congress. Im susan rayburn, curator of baseball americana. This was a collaboration the library did with Major League Baseball, espn and Baseball Hall of fame in cooperstown. Weve got incredible things on display, things youve probably never seen before. Lets start with some of the earliest. So right now were standing in the front of the exhibit looking at origins and early days where weve got some interesting artifacts that suggest that baseball has a history thats much longer than the 19th century. In fact, weve got an example from a medieval manuscript. These are little miniature figures that are part of the border of a book produced in 1344. You can see weve got a monk and a nun with a ball and bat and nuns in a primitive outfield. What this shows you is bat and ball games were played for search rice before europeans began calling different kinds of games baseball. Our next stop here is this cute little book i absolutely adore. Its one of the favorite items in our collections. Its a little pretty pocketbook from 1787, and it includes here a little wood cut drawing of children playing baseball with three posts. The two the word baseball is printed there and theres a little poem with the little boy running home with joy. The lexicon showing up. The word baseball, home, first produced in 1744 in britain. Its not until it comes to the United States in 1787 that the word first shows up in print in america. As a parallel item to that weve got a diary, original page from student diary from 1786, john ray smith, who is attending the college of new jersey. That later becomes princeton university. On march 22nd writes, fine day, played baseball. Im beaten but cant catch or hit. Hes not a great player. The following year the College Faculty will ban baseball as being unbecoming of a gentleman. This is the earliest written reference we have to baseball. So already the game is on college campuses. Already played by boys much older than children. These are older teenagers playing this game. A couple of other things to note in the early going of the game. Weve got examples of 1850s from the new york game and massachusetts game. You can see in the new york game the diamond were used to but massachusetts had a competitive rival game which was in the shape of a rectangle. These two battled for supremacy in the 19th century. Its the new york game with the popularity of new york press. Their enthusiasm of the game, constant coverage of the game. Eventually its the new york game thats going to win out. Of the things that weve just shown you, everything in here is original with the exception of this blowup of the illuminated manuscri manuscript. These are all from original pages. One of the things that surprises a lot of people when they come to the library of congress and they see this exhibit or hear us talk about it is that we have very large sports collections. Were a premier secret sports archive if you will. Through copy right, we have received everything from early rule books to team directories, to handwritten histories of leagues and things, so theres a great deal of material we have here to work with in documenting not just baseball but a number of sports. Next i want to show you something that was recently rediscovered that had been hidden away in a desk drawer for years and no one really realized the importance of it until recently. These are the founding documents of american baseball. So here we are in front of whats been called baseballs magna carta. These are the founding documents that were used at the 1857 baseball convention in new york city that laid out the rules of the game that we have come to know as american baseball. And what happened was the ni knickerbock Knickerbockers Baseball Club of new york got together and came up with a set of rules they developed. Up until that time teams played by different rules. You couldnt have meaningful competition while this was going on. Doc adams leader of knickerbocker Baseball Club drafted what he calls the rules of baseball. Those were combined with william granels conditions of the field and umpires. Through those toumts they put together this red ribbons document, laws of baseball, that the rules committee used at the convention. Its here out of these sessions that several major essential fundamental rules were developed. Nine players to a side, nine innings in a game, 90 feet between the bases. Some of the things we have come to accept as the essentials of baseball. This is where they are agreeing to those rules. This is where they are coming from. They are not known to exist until then. The granddaughter kept them in a desk drawer, collected in a box of maps and went on auction in 1999. No one realized their value then. Then when they went on auction in 2016, historians were able to do some forensic and historical analysis and determined these were incredibly valuable papers. They have not been seen widely this is the first on display. Im excited were in the library. Almost as important in some ways as some of our other founding documents. Next, well take a look how baseball spread across the United States. Were continuing here with baseballs origins and early days. A good way to demonstrate that is with the earliest baseball coverage of intercollegiate games between williams and amherst in burglary 1989 playing by the massachusetts rules and the scoring was clearly a little bit different. Amherst 73williams 32. The importance of this document, which is probably the only original that still survives, this is an early stab at sports writing. A lot of the coverage, how they arrived at the site, their hotel, how they looked their accommodations. Its an unusual document. The game was part of a doubleheader. Baseball and chess. One day they played baseball, the next day a chess mass. Coverage of the chess match on the other side as well. We had also here a really early box score. It showed the names of the players, tallies, the number of times they came home and the number of outs they made. After the civil war what we have here is a prototype for being cards. The earliest existing baseball card. The brooklyn atlantics, champions of america. Went to the studio, had photos taken. Made copies. They would pass to fans and admirers as well as opposing teams. Its not for another 20 or more years before manufactured baseball cards, as we come to know them, are being produced. This is probably the earliest example of a trading card. Up here, this is an example of the game spreading across the United States. The civil war was actually a huge catalyst for spreading baseball. A lot of the northern soldiers introduced it to southerners in prison camps. This is an original print that was produced during the war. Union prisoners at salisbury, north carolina. You see a game going on. As the war continued, the likelihood they were playing baseball in prison camps greatly diminished. Early in the war, there are documented instances of this happening. Finally after the war, just a few years later, 1869, Cincinnati Red stockings become the first Baseball Team, the first time openly paid. Not long after that other club owners decide were not going to have amateurs in the game anymore. Were paying everyone. This is commemorative photo of the first time in 1869. Next, now that weve got professional teams and soldiers after the war who are taking the game westward, more and more people are playing. Lets take a look at who those folks are. This is a section we have on who is playing back in the 19th century. Just about everyone is but the only people being paid for it are white men on Major League Baseball teams. What we have here from 1887 is an uncut sheet of baseball cards from the first year they are produced. Tobacco companies would tuck in individual cards into their cigarette packages as a way of promoting not only their product but you could collect a number of packages and then submit it later for a nicer bigger card. Whats interesting about washington baseball cards here is they are uncut. These are pretty rare. You dont find them often. This was submitted for copy right at the library of congress. Just as a juxtaposition you see a larger cut. Some of the poses have stayed the same. The diversity of the players has changed tremendously. Weve got a lot more black and hispanic players which you certainly did not have in the 1880s in the major leagues. One of the most important people of that era and in fact in baseball history is John Montgomery ward. He wrote the book, how to become a player. He was the first to write the book. It was an attempt to look at the actual historical origins of baseball. He spends most of his time as a pitcher and later a shortstop, working to improve the life of the average baseball player who usually picked up low paying jobs in the offseason as a farmer and Railroad Worker and he fought against what was known as the reserve clause in baseball. This was a clause included in all contracts for players in which their rights were held by the club in perpetuity. So unless a player was traded or sold to another team, he had no say in where he played or even how much he was paid. This reserve clause is something that Baseball Players are going to battle throughout much of the 20th century as well. It really starts with John Montgomery ward. In 1890, he almost single handedly forms the Players League in opposition to Players League and association. It became the Third Major League in baseball. It only lasted one year. Even though he was able to attract a lot of star players to his league, they could not complete financially against the established teams in the National League and american association. Ultimately it fell apart after a year. This was an early attempt among Baseball Players to control their own destiny and to determine how much they were paid and how much they were worth. So from the 1880s on until 1947, Major League Baseball was played only by white men, but that starts to change. Well take a look at the negro leagues over in the next case. So for black players who were not permitted to play in the major leagues, a lot of them started their own barnstorming teams. We have an example of a team in 1880s in danbury, connecticut. Its not until 1820 that foster establishes the negro leagues, a professional league. There were a number of incarnations, a number of teams participated in that. We have examples from indianapolis clowns, a program from one of their games. A signed baseball by satchel page, a phenomenal pitcher who got his start and spent many years in the leagues, doesnt become a rookie in the major leagues until 42 and continues to pitch until hes 59 in the major leagues actually. While thats going on, while africanamericans are having to make their way with their own leagues, other brands of baseball are developing. What we have here is an image of the world champions indoor Baseball Team from 1905. Indoor baseball was invented in 1887 in chicago. It was way for teams to keep in shape in the offseason in the winter. Almost immediately indoor baseball moves outdoors. What characterizes indoor baseball is larger balls, smaller until 1926 that indoor baseball adopts the name that most of us know the game as, and thats softball. Another thing to point out here is that while black players were not getting near the publicity that white players were they also were not appearing on baseball cards that were being issued by tobacco companies. That was the domain of white players. What weve got here is a fantastic collection of really early baseball cards from 1887 to 1914. All of these cards are original. They all represent a different set or brand of cards that appeared. Youve got a couple of small cards that are only about two inches long. You can see here at shortstop and at second base. Weve got ty cobb down there batting and mathison in the middle. Those were premium cards. If you sent in enough cigarette packages to show you had bought all these tobacco products, you could trade that in and receive a large premium card. These cards are part of the benjamin k. Edwards collection. Its a phenomenal collection of cards not only of Baseball Players but of trapeze artists, circus performers, billiards players, and all kinds of athletes appeared on these cards, but it was baseball that won out. The popularity of baseball was such that most people were interested in collecting those cards, and eventually tobacco cards turned to producing only baseball cards. The other people who were not featured on baseball cards of course were female players, but there were women out there who were playing on organized teams in organized leagues early on as well. Well go over to this next case and take a look at them. So other people who were playing in the game, of course, were women, even in the 19th century they had barn storming teams. This is a fantastic team from 1913, the new york female giants. Their captain, the woman whos holding the two bats there, excelled in every sport including cliff diving, and she later had a short show Business Career on the stage on broadway and in hollywood doing silent films. But what most people have learned about womens baseball is that the first professional leagues developed in world war ii. The all american girls professional baseball league. It was established as a way to entertain the home front during the war and to provide professional baseball while most of the men were away. Here we have the original jersey that Dottie Ferguson wore for the rockford peaches. She led the league in steals, and you can imagine that that was probably a pretty difficult record to achieve giving that she was having to slide in such a short uniform. Some of the sleeves here show some of the wear and tear over the years, but she wound up stealing 461 bases in her tenyear career. Then we also shed some light on girls breaking into Little League. A number of lawsuits were filed in the early 1970s, and so its not until 1974 that girls were able to join Little League teams, and then when you take that to its furthest degree, here we have mone davis on the cover of Sports Illustrated after she threw a winning game in the world series in williamsport for Little League. So black ballplayers finally had a shot at the major leagues in 1947. The first one to break the color line is jackie robinson, and larry doby will do that two month later in the american league. The library is very fortunate to have the Branch Rickie papers and the jackie robin sson collection, and that is where we were able to draw a couple of items including this letter from jackie in 1950 written to Branch Rickie who was leaving the dodgers, and robinson is writing to let him know just how grateful he is that Branch Rickie gave him in signing him to the dodgers, letting him know that he was a trusted friend and that he hopes that rickie will think of him as a friend in return. Its a very heartfelt letter thanking him for everything that he had done for himself and for his family. So what we have here is the original first page of Jackie Robinsons letter, and then on the back is a reproduction. In order to preserve this letter and keep it from being affected by the lights and kind of the wear and tear of being on exhibition, we will eventually swap these out and what well have on display then will be the original signature of jackie later on in the exhibitions run. So what weve seen here so far today is only about half of the exhibit. So theres a lot more to see. So if youre in washington, d. C. , please come to the library of congress and check out the exhibition. You can watch this or other american artifacts programs at any time by visiting our website cspan. Org history. Here is some of what you can watch today on American History tv. Next, an event in the u. S. Capitol rotunda honoring the 116th congress. After that, House Speaker nancy pelosi hosts a reception to commemorate the 100th anniversary in the house of representatives passing the 19th amendment to the constitution, which guaranteed women the right to vote. Later journalist mark johnson on the career of senator Burton Wheeler known for being the prosecutor in the 1920s Teapot Dome Oil scandal, and his views on president roosevelts new deal policies. All week were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. The lectures in history, american artifacts, real america, the civil war, oral histories, the presidency, and special event coverage about our nations history. Enjoy American History tv now and every weekend on cspan3. American history tv products are now available at the new cspan online store. Go to cspanstore. Org to see whats new for American History tv and check out all of the cspan products. From the u. S. Capitol historical society, in celebration of the 116th congress, we heard from House Speaker nancy pelosi and historian joann