Second of three parts
We know it's baseball.
But to 21st-century eyes, the sunlit sport Thomas Eakins portrayed in his 1875 watercolor Baseball Players Practicing might just as well have been cricket.
In it, an upright, uptight batter stands with his foot in the bucket. He chokes up on an untapered bat, holding it away from his body as if preparing to swat an annoying insect. He wears high-top shoes, a floppy cap and a thick blue belt.
While the catcher's pose is more familiar, he looms dangerously close to the hitter for someone so unprotected.
The most curious feature of Eakins' work, however, is the conjunction of dirt paths. The image depicted by Philadelphia's most renowned artist, whose work again has been in the news 91 years after his death, appears to be taking place at first base or at least somewhere other than home plate.
"Eakins was very interested in the human form," said Tom Shieber, senior curator of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, "and that may be why this picture looks a little wacky."
Still, like Eakins' other richly detailed works illustrating popular Philadelphia sports in the 19th century - rowing, sailing, boxing and wrestling - Baseball Players Practicing provides a rare glimpse into a city game at the dawn of its professional era.
The watercolor captures a sunny afternoon's practice at North Philadelphia's Jefferson Street Grounds late in the 1874 season. The two players, batter Wes Fisler and catcher John Clapp, were Philadelphia Athletics.
"The mood," wrote Thomas Stebbins, an art critic and an Eakins contemporary, "is more one of reverie than of exaltation . . . as the ballplayers stand poised in late afternoon sunlight, the artist trying to make sense of an increasingly complex world through the ritual of sport."
The artist might have been a frequent visitor to the ballpark, which was bounded by 25th, 27th, Master and Jefferson Streets. He lived nearby in his parents' home at 1729 Mount Vernon St.
Early in a career that would make him one of America's foremost painters, Eakins, then 30, was attracted to the young game of baseball as he was to any activity involving intricate or vigorous motion, the more modern the better. Author Elizabeth John has characterized his artistic interest as "the heroism of modern life."
