NARRATIVE: These town boys, barefoot and in overalls, pause for a team tintype (1890s). Perhaps one of them will go on to play for the Elmira Gladiators, the Oswego Starchboxes, or the Chicago Orphans (now the Chicago Cubs).

I enjoy obscure history. Would you be shocked, as I was, to learn that Lewis and Clark’s return journey home from the Pacific Ocean included playing a game of “Base,” a form of baseball, with the Nez Perce Indians? Would it surprise you to learn that Alexander Joy Cartwright, Jr., whom some consider the “Father of Baseball,” made an ‘expedition’ out West in 1849 to teach the game of base ball across the new continent from New York to Colorado, to California and even to Hawaii? Would your mind question the truth of famed Apache warrior, Geronimo, while a prisoner at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, engaging in a game of baseball?

Why competition? Is it for personal or community pride? Is it to test the limits of both body and mind? Does it help establish pecking orders non-violently? It may serve for each of us to answer that question for ourselves. Perhaps part of the human experience is that it comes with the innate need to see ‘who can be the best at a thing’ and, as history shows, it really doesn’t matter what that ‘thing’ is. Be it chariot racing, tug-o-war, marbles, or who can best ride a horse at full gallop.

Two years prior to sculpting this piece, I was perusing the internet and Googled ‘images of the Old West.’ The photo of these boys, Indiana glass factory workers from 1910, came up. I was so moved by the spirit of this image I saved it in my research files for over a year and was later inspired to create this sculpture in clay.