1885 Harvard Yale Base Ball Broadside

March 21st 2026

THIS WEEKS FEATURE

was able to get this 1885 Harvard Yale baseball championship baseball broadside off eBay at a reasonable price…likely because of condition…However when it comes to the game poster my thought process is very forgiving for condition. They're not like a program or ticket...they’re almost suppose to be beat-up…Typically they were posted outdoors so it's to be expected...If they aren’t at least a little beat you should be giving it the stink eye…as they're making re-pops of almost everything now...

This poster is a memorial piece. Someone over printed the final score post game…sort of as a trophy…I’ve only seen one other poster with the post game score over-printed...for the 1898 Cal Stanford football game…Although it wasn't a game poster but a variety show poster following the game...It's probably the most magnificent Cal football illustration ever done...

PRESTIGIOUS ABBREVIATION

HUBBC stands for “Harvard University Base Ball Club”…See the photos below I took of the trophy baseball case in the Lee Family Hall of Athletic History overlooking Harvard Stadium, located in the Murr Center at Harvard University...back in 2011

LEE FAMILY HALL OF ATHLETIC HISTORY

AT MURR CENTER HARVARD

Overlooking Harvard Field

LIKE A BAKED POTATO

There are certain attributes that make a broadside more desirable…date…place…etc…This one is like a loaded baked potato with everything…You got the date, place…the who what why and more…I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a broadside with the rosters of both teams…!!...

FAMOUS YALIE

While doing my due diligence I spotted the Stagg name on the Yale roster…That would be the much celebrated Yale legend Amos Alonzo Stagg…...Looking deeper I discovered that even though Yale lost the game it was Stagg's rookie year...that and the fact it was for the championship put it at the "gotta have level"....The eBay listing had a "or best offer"...It was one of the few times I didn't want to monkey around over $50 or $100 and just pulled the trigger.

Thirty eight years ago I began my journey in sports antiques with Amos Alonzo Stagg...visiting his son Paul Stagg's home in Stockton California and buying his fathers bookends...Thirty eight years later I'm buying this important poster from his rookie year at Yale...I don't ever recall a game poster with the rosters of both teams...It's got everything on it you could want...

Collection of Carlton Hendricks - Amos Alonzo Stagg's

Bookends I got from his son Paul Stagg in 1988

When I was a boy in West Orange, New Jersey, in the years just following the Civil War, my father annually bought two shotes in the early spring and fattened them for November butchering. The meat was salted down in part, the hams smoked and the balance ground into sausage, which, with buckwheat cakes, was our winter breakfast seven mornings a week. Each year I spoke for the bladders of the slaughtered hogs. These bladders we inflated by blowing through a quill.

They were the only footballs we knew, and such usually had been the football as far back as it can be traced. From the use of hog bladders rescued from the slaughterhouse came the sport-page term "pigskin," which still clings to the American football, though neither the bladder nor the outer covering of leather has had for many years the remotest relation to swine.

"Touchdown" by

Amos Alonzo Stagg 1927

Amos Alonzo Stagg was twenty two years old when he enrolled in Yale in 1884. He was...

YALE

BASEBALL

Star player on Yale baseball team 1885-1888

YALE

FOOTBALL

THEN IT GOT VERY INTERESTING

So got it...snapped it off eBay...I'll email my buddy John Gennnantonio...show off my big find I thought,...waiting for reply....nothing...silence...maybe he's busy...I try again...Fineally I get a text back that he has an example...He sends a photo of a collage of stuff with his example of my broadside in the background...All a sudden I recognize the trophy in the collage that I sold or traded him back in 2020...The darn trophy was for the game my broadside was for...AARRGGHH...I want that trophy back I texted in jest...After he bought it he went on to form a collection related to the trophy...Cabinet cards of the players...the broadside...photo of the winning team Harvard.

PHOTO OF JOHN GENNANTONIO'S 1885 HARVARD YALE BASEBALL CHAMPIONSHIP BROADSIDE - AND TROPHY HE BUILT THE COLLECTION AROUND

I remember when I got it back in 2020...and John wanted it...I guess we made a deal...But I wanted to get a light box to photograph it in before I shipped it... in case I ever wanted to do a story on it. Busy as I get I took too long and the next thing I know I get a light box in the mail from John...So that put an end to my excuses...

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