Stars, Stripes and pinstripes

It's too thin, and has a distinctive arc, but it is still immediately recognizable as a baseball bat.

It's a tree branch painstakingly carved, the grip fashioned of medical adhesive tape, made in 1942 by a United Press reporter named Glen Stadler.

With a ball crafted from a champagne cork, wrapped with two socks and layers of adhesive tape, it was the foundation of a short winter season for 100 American journalists and diplomats interned by the Nazis at Bad Nauheim after the United States entered World War II.

For anyone who wonders why baseball is called "America's pastime," there are answers aplenty at "Baseball as America," the current exhibit at the National Constitution Center on Independence Mall.

As the exhibit - hundreds of items of baseball memorabilia assembled in a 6,000-square-foot area by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y. - makes clear, baseball has been intertwined with the national identity, big business and government since the late 19th century.

And with the Phillies set to launch their new season with Monday's home opener, "Baseball as America," which runs through May 11, is a timely look at the game and how it became such an integral part of U.S. culture.

If a baseball history exhibit seems an unlikely match for a museum about the Constitution, Joseph M. Torsella, the Constitution Center's president and chief executive officer, agrees.

"It turns out that we had a lot more connections than anyone expected," Torsella said. "There are many parallels to the Constitution's story and its role in American life."

Just as the Constitution embodies the contradictions, the strengths and weaknesses, and evolution of the United States, so too does baseball - almost from the moment it was born.

"In what other sport does the president of the United States open the season by throwing out the first ball?" asked Torsella, referring to a tradition that began with President William Howard Taft in 1910.

Baseball is also the only sport that Congress has given an exemption from federal antitrust laws.

The exhibit has an amazing collection of artifacts that trace baseball's beginnings and how quickly it took hold through all segments of American society.

"They really sent their treasures," Torsella said of the Cooperstown museum.

Among the artifacts: a baseball used in 1860 in a Philadelphia "inter-Philadelphia" match between the Mercantile Baseball Club and the Continentals.

And though Negro League players were segregated from white major leagues, the pedigree of the game among African Americans is not much younger. A copy of Sol White's 1907 History of Colored Baseball traces the beginnings of organized baseball among black Americans to 1885, and its photos show such teams as the 1906 Philadelphia Giants, Kansas City Monarchs, and Pittsburgh Crawfords.

Organized women's baseball also has a long history, illustrated by Edith Houghton's uniform jersey from the 1920s' Philadelphia Bobbies.

Torsella said he was most fascinated by how quickly baseball became a big business and linked itself to "Big Business."

In 1871, as one artifact shows, the Philadelphia Athletics were already selling season passes to its games at the old Jefferson Street Grounds.

And by the turn of the 20th century, star ball players were earning money by endorsing a wide range of products and local companies.

The exhibit has baseball highs: the careers of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig; the Phillies cap worn by Jim Bunning when he pitched his perfect game in 1964; the career of Jackie Robinson, the first African American player to integrate the major leagues, and that of Hank Aaron, who endured taunts and hate mail as he challenged the legend of Ruth.

There are also the lows, including the shoes of "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, a member of the 1919 Chicago White Sox and one of eight players banned from baseball for life in the "Black Sox Scandal." The players were accused of throwing the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds for $100,000.

For younger visitors, an interactive "bat-on-ball" exhibit offers a chance to test baseball physics in action with replicas of bats used by four of the game's best hitters: Ruth's 35½-inch, 39-ounce model used to hit his record 60th home run of the season in 1927; Mark McGwire's 341/2-inch, 33-ounce model used in his record 62d home run of the season in 1998; Edd Roush's 36-inch, 47-ounce model, used by the lifetime .323 hitter who claimed to have never broken a bat in a career that spanned 1913 to 1931; and Rod Carew's 34-inch, 32-ounce model, like that used to record his 3,000th career hit in 1985.

"Baseball as America" is a metaphor that has been noticed by more than a few scholars, most notably in 1954 by French-born U.S. scholar Jacques Barzun: "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game, and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams."

"Baseball as America" is open through May 11 at the National Constitution Center, 525 Arch St. on Independence Mall.

Exhibit admission: $15, $14 for seniors 65 and older, $9 for children ages 4 to 12. Active military personnel and children 3 and younger are free. Includes center's main exhibition and theater production "Freedom Rising."

Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays; 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays; noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Information: 215-409-6700, www.constitutioncenter.org.

EndText