The Art of Baseball, opening April 17 at the Concord Museum and guest curated by historian and fan Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D. ’68, celebrates not only the sport, but the love of the game. On display are eclectic memorabilia—a weathervane, quilts, posters, and tickets—along with paintings and sculptures by Robert Rauschenberg and William Zorach, among others. Most objects were collected by Millie and Bill Gladstone, starting in 1971. The couple (and Goodwin) are featured in a video made for the show. Of a woman’s comb carved with a player sliding into base, Millie Gladstone says, “I love the fact that someone cared enough about baseball to go and do something like that.” Also on view is a Ted Williams glove from the 1946 World Series and a Carl Yastrzemski cap, circa 1981 (both on loan from the National Baseball Hall of Fame), and other material from the Red Sox Hall of Famers. “I think the reason baseball has played such a large role in American history,” notes Goodwin, “is that it really connects families over time…there are memories of having gone to games together, of having loved a sport when you were a child with your father, and now sharing that same sport with a child when you are a mother.”
