Beschreibung:

Very rare albumen carte-de-visite of a baseball team posed outside, some with bats in hand. A well-dressed gentleman wearing a top hat also stands with the team. With J.D. Merritt, Practical Photographer, (At Frayzer's old stand), Charlottesville, Va. backmark, which indicates that the team may be somehow associated with the University of Virginia, located in Charlottesville. Under magnification, it is possible to make out a letter on the players' shirts, which appears to be an Old English "M." This almost certainly identifies the club as the Monticello Club, formed at the University of Virginia on April 14, 1866. The "Monticellos'" first recorded contest was a 42-5 victory over the Staunton "Excelsiors" on June 8, 1866, in Charlottesville. Baseball: The Peoples Game, by Harold Seymour (Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), relates that Charlottesvile was one of the few places in the South with an active baseball community prior to the Civil War, and describes the Monticellos as the de facto varsity club of the University of Virginia, pulling its members from lesser "campus scrub teams" called things such as the "Bum Stingers," "Hell Busters," and "Pill-Garlics." They were forced to travel to Washington, DC, in order to find suitable competition. Condition: Some edgewear to albumen photograph, especially along top edge; light corner and edgewear to mount.