What's at the Met for sports fans like me?

Jayson: Hi I'm Jayson, and I am ten years old, and I am from Trumbull, Connecticut. A lot of people may think that there's only paintings in the Museum, but there's also a lot of baseball cards. This is Freyda. Freyda Spira: Hi, I'm Freyda Spira. I'm an associate curator in the Drawings and Prints department. Jayson: I am a fan of baseball myself, and I actually collect baseball cards. Freyda Spira: We have about thirty thousand baseball cards, which is the most outside of the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. So these are the first baseball cards ever created, in the late 1800s. With baseball, they wanted to show not only the player, but all of the equipment and the team. Jayson: So that's their bat, their belt, and some other stuff? Freyda Spira: That's right, and it just gives you a sense of what the sport was really like back then. Jayson: OK, so are these the next baseball cards? Freyda Spira: So these are called Cabinet Cards, and what's cool about them is that they're actual photographs. And so, someone took a photograph and then they just pasted it onto a piece of cardboard. So this is the Honus Wagner card, and this is the rarest baseball card in history. Jayson: Honus Wagner was a good player. He played on Pittsburgh, and he is really rare because there's only twelve of them left on earth. Freyda Spira: These are called the Hassan Triple Folders, and they're really cool because they include a black-and-white photograph of an action shot, and then it's framed by two players. Jayson: I like the action shots because I like to see intense scenes where somebody's sliding into the base, or somebody's about to get thrown out. Freyda: So here is Mickey Mantle. Jayson: Mickey Mantle! Freyda Spira: Yeah, and what you're starting to see is that around 1952 they're starting to think about standardizing the cards. Jayson: They started to have signatures on them, and they also pointed out the team that the players played on. And I also recognize some of these players: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson. He helps convince the major leagues to let African Americans and Hispanics play. I do play baseball, and I'm Hispanic as well. [baseball bat cracks] [crowd cheers] Jayson: How did the Museum get all these baseball cards? Freyda Spira: The collector, Jefferson Burdick, started collecting cards when he was ten, and he amassed this huge collection of over three hundred thousand cards. Jayson: The Met also has not just baseball cards, but basketball, boxing, football, everything. A lot of different types of cards. If some kids come in here, how would they see these cards? Freyda Spira: So, all year we have on exhibit baseball cards in The American Wing, in the Luce Study Center. We have about 150 to 200 baseball cards on view all year round. Do you have a most valuable card in your collection? Jayson: Yes I do, it's kind of almost a tie. One of them is myself, a card—I was playing baseball and they took a picture. And the other card is Bobby Valentine, a signed card. Thanks for showing me around, Freyda. Freyda Spira: Thanks for coming in. Jayson: This is Jayson, reporting from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Jayson and Freyda Spira: Bye!