[electricity buzzing] - [indistinct chatter] - [upbeat stadium music] [clicking] [indistinct chatter continues] [soft scratching] [clacking] [Dick] <i>Never have I seen</i> <i>such undisturbed grass</i> <i>going into my first ballpark.</i> - [crowd indistinctly cheering] <i>Grass in the city</i> <i>could be interrupted</i> <i>by stones and rocks...</i> <i>...but this was</i> <i>an eternal color of green</i> <i>that ran through</i> <i>that whole field.</i> <i>And I've seen grass before.</i> <i>So why is this grass</i> <i>so different?</i> <i>Dick Perez is</i> <i>an artist-illustrator</i> <i>who has turned his talents,</i> <i>and they are considerable, to baseball.</i> [commentator 1] <i>And the base team</i> <i>hit a home run for the Bambino.</i> [reporter] <i>Dick Perez, the official artist</i> <i>of the Baseball Hall of Fame,</i> <i>creates baseball masterpieces.</i> - [crowd cheering] -[umpire] <i>He's safe!</i> <i>I've done thousands of them.</i> <i>It's just the product of getting good.</i> - [birds chirping] -[Dick] <i>I've painted scenes and players</i> <i>from its inception until today.</i> <i>So my work will show</i> <i>the way baseball changed</i> <i>over the course of its history.</i> <i>You have changes of uniforms,</i> <i>you have ballpark changes,</i> <i>you have signage</i> <i>that doesn't exist anymore.</i> [Dick] <i>And of course,</i> <i>the color barrier.</i> [commentator 3] <i>Jackie wallops a home run</i> <i>into the lower left field stand.</i> <i>You specialize also</i> <i>in baseball cards.</i> [Dick] <i>When I did</i> Diamond Kings, <i>that was the golden years.</i> <i>I had all the freedom</i> <i>in the world.</i> <i>I started really experimenting.</i> <i>I did portraits</i> <i>that were bright colored reds</i> <i>and yellows and green shadows.</i> <i>Those were very satisfying.</i> [Bill] <i>What Dick does is paint baseball</i> <i>as it has not existed</i> <i>on the field,</i> <i>but exists in his imagination.</i> <i>This is not mere portraiture.</i> <i>This is love on canvas.</i> [stadium fanfare] - [man] <i>Play ball.</i> [bell chimes] [man 1] Growing up, your cards were a highlight every year.

- [Dick] And you collected <i>Diamond Kings?</i> Yeah.

- Oh yes, I did.

Yes, I did.

I never got any feedback at the time, but boy, after you guys grew up-- - [man 2] You are a legend, sir.

- [man 3] Your artwork gave us a ton of happiness.

- The <i>Diamond Kings</i> were my favorite thing every year.

- Whoa!

- Yeah.

<i>-Puerto Rico.</i> Yeah!

Puerto-- That's great!

- [speaking Spanish] Uh-huh.

<i>Sí.</i> <i>-Puerto Rico.</i> Your <i>Diamond Kings,</i> you just-- as a, as a sports artist, you've been a tremendous, tremendous, tremendous inspiration.

- Well, thank you.

Uh-- - So-- Thank you.

May I shake your hand?

- Uh, you may, you may.

I'm trying not to fangirl too much here, okay?

- [laughs] -[Dick] No, no.

- Such an honor.

Such-- - Yeah, thank you, - thank you.

- Yeah.

Yo-- your cards, like, in 1982, right?

I was one of those kids opening the packs.

It was like magic.

[man 4] These have-- really became my collecting passion.

- I know you've seen them tons of times... - Well, yeah, - but they're not signed.

- ...you didn't see the entire set completely signed.

- No, look at that.

You got me to sign!

- So-- I did.

- You-- number one in the book.

- Nice to finally meet you.

- [Dick] Thank you.

I've been a big fan for a long time.

- [Dick] Oh!

<i>Diamond Kings?</i> - Yep.

I've collected them all.

[Dick] It's been a fun life and a lucky one.

[indistinct chatter] Baseball.

For more than 150 years, this game has been at the center of America and what it means to be American.

In the beginning, children played different versions of baseball in the dirt.

Civil War soldiers taught the game to townsfolk as they passed through on their way to the next battle.

- [faint crowd cheering] - When the fighting ended, people across the nation formed baseball clubs.

Social clubs with memberships and smoking rooms and their own specific rules.

Even now, we call a baseball locker room the clubhouse.

In those early days, pitchers truly pitched the ball underhand, like horseshoes.

They weren't allowed to throw the ball.

That's why we still call them pitchers.

Batters were allowed to call for a high or low pitch and could wait as long as they wanted for a pitch that met their eye.

- [whooshing] -[man faintly] <i>Slow ball.</i> That's why strikes and balls were invented.

At first, it took nine balls for a batter to draw a walk.

For a time, baseball teams experimented with a four-strike strikeout.

But it was baseball.

Even after all these years, we recognize the game.

The dirt, the grass, the crack of the bat, the home runs, the stolen bases, the strikeouts, the great catches.

- [faint fanfare music playing] -From the start, America was enthralled.

The game's first stars, Cap Anson, Buck Ewing, Cy Young, King Kelly, "Sliding Billy" Hamilton, they filled the local sports pages and children's imaginations.

- Everybody played.

Neighbors everywhere complained about baseballs - crashing through their living room windows.

- [faint glass shattering] I may or may not have been guilty of a few of those.

Even before the Civil War, newspapers called baseball the national game.

But it would be almost 100 years before the game truly became national.

And over that time, baseball's journey would mirror the country's journey.

[Dick] What I'm working on is a painting of Aaron Judge.

He's doing things that only superstars do.

Aaron Judge is what I would consider a hero.

But there are other heroes in life.

- [birds chirping] -[gentle music] My story is an immigrant story... <i>-You are Puerto Rican?</i> <i>-Yes, born in San Lorenzo.</i> - [interviewer] <i>San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico.</i> <i>-Uh--</i> ...from a little town that was 17 streets big.

My dad, he was a peon for the local grocery.

He would take me on his trips.

So one day, a truck comes, my father's getting on, he's like, "Come on, Junior."

And my mother, she looks at the driver and he was drunk.

She said to my father, "Not today.

You're not taking him today."

That was the day that he had the accident and he didn't survive it.

So there we were, in Puerto Rico, my mother, single mother, two children.

- And what are the prospects of that in Puerto Rico?

- [indistinct chatter] So it was decided that we should come to America because there were pioneer family members that had made the move.

We couldn't come altogether because we couldn't afford it.

So they decided to send me first.

Six years old.

I get on the plane and it was very, very tearful image of my mother at the window of the airport, and she's waving goodbye.

[music continues] I was told that, "There will be some people there and they will come to you and they will take you away to their home."

This group of people came at me.

And they knew my name and they picked me up, and I said, "Well, I guess I'll go with them."

[chuckles] I don't know when I learned how to speak English, but I did.

I started making friends, and all these friends played baseball.

And I just became enraptured by the game.

I was in an element where baseball was all around me.

New York had three teams!

It was the center of the baseball world.

So you were in it and you couldn't avoid being affected by it because you wanted to fit in.

Kids I didn't know, kids I got to know, kids in school, - playgrounds, recess period... - [children indistinctly shouting] ...punchball, stickball.

Everything was centered around baseball.

- [bird chirping] -[boy softly] <i>Here it comes.</i> [Dick] Baseball is an immigrant story too.

There was a flood of European nationals that would come here looking for a better life.

They were German, Italians, Irish.

By 1947, Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby broke the color barrier.

Then there was the influx of Latino players when Roberto Clemente was the idol of many a Latino.

A hero of mine, this is Roberto Clemente in one of the two paintings that was presented to Vera, his wife, at a special event that we had in Puerto Rico, and I painted her and she's right here, and I don't even know if I told her.

[laughs] And as we know now, there's a diversity in baseball that's American.

I felt more connected to that part of baseball than any-- <i>Baseball is a game of youth.</i> <i>We tend to look back</i> <i>on our youth as the good times, even though </i> <i>you may have been brought up in poverty.</i> [Dick] There were gangs where we had a ball club.

That was enough.

Our team had a Greek, a Swede, a Cuban, me, and then the rest were African American kids and they were great friends.

And, uh, you know, you played a season and then you had a championship game and, uh, we won 3-2.

And they asked us, "What would you like, a trophy or a jacket?"

"Give me a jacket!"

I mean, a jacket I can wear, I can go forever.

And, uh, this is it.

I did play for a championship team.

Mickey Mantle was like this.

[light lively music] [chuckling] One of the biggest things of coming to this country was you wanted to be an American.

Mickey Mantle was an American.

He represented America to me.

And I wanted to be a baseball player, I wanted to replace Mickey Mantle when he retired, until we started taking our own batting averages.

I remember figuring out that, uh, um, I only bat .188.

I better do something else in life.

[chuckles] [birds chirping] [John] Every sport has a Hall of Fame.

But the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, is different.

It's a place filled with wonder.

For years, people insisted that the game itself was invented in Cooperstown by a Civil War hero named Abner Doubleday.

We now know that isn't true, but Cooperstown feels like the place where baseball should've been invented.

Mythology and history swirl together in Cooperstown.

When a player is elected to the Hall of Fame, something about them changes.

They gain a small measure of immortality.

They are permanently connected to the greatest players of them all, to their own personal heroes.

To Lou Gehrig and Ted Williams, then Satchel Paige.

To Don Drysdale, Johnny Bench, and Tony Gwynn.

When Tom Seaver would return to the Hall of Fame, he wouldn't always be sure to gaze at his own plaque, but he would also visit the plaques of Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson and Sandy Koufax.

He would close his eyes, place his hand on their plaques, and for an instant... ...travel in time.

[light ethereal music] I was one of those kids that drew a lot on the margins of their notebooks.

And I did my classmates, cartoons of them.

There were baseball players.

- [film reel whirring] - It was a ritual for me where the new stock of baseball cards came into the candy store, and I'm there.

Those first of the season cards.

And you open them up and you chew the gum and you had your cards.

Any card that had a ball player on it, Del Crandall, he was there for a reason, he's a professional ball player and I love this card.

- And of course, you invented pastimes with it... - [indistinct chatter] ...by flipping cards where you actually played each other.

- We put them on the spokes of a bike... ...to make them look like it's a motor.

Tha-- that was a terrible thing to do to a baseball card.

[bells tolling] After I had come here in 1947, it took about a year for my mother and my sister to join me.

- Hey!

Whoa, whoa!

How you doing?

- [woman laughing] Hey!

- [Dick] <i>My mother met a man and they fell in love...</i> - [inaudible chatter] - You're gonna sit here.

<i>-...and they got married,</i> <i>and it made me so happy.</i> I came to this country without a father.

It seemed to me that everybody I knew, every kid that I knew, had a father.

And I really wanted a father so bad.

And he came into my life.

Dad only went to the eighth grade, - Mommy to third.

Daddy's-- Yeah.

- Right.

[indistinct mumble] ...I thought it was fifth.

- No.

And, uh-- - That makes me s-- my Spanish is a third grade Spanish.

[laughs] We left New York, you would've been 16.

[Dick] <i>Domingo was a merchant marine.</i> <i>-And he was away a lot, and we wanted him home.</i> - [boat horn blaring] <i>So he became a porter</i> <i>for Trailways,</i> <i>which meant us moving</i> <i>to Philadelphia.</i> <i>Because I still loved baseball</i> <i>and I was away from the Yankees,</i> <i>I somehow became a Phillies fan.</i> [commentator] <i>Here is Jim Bunning,</i> <i>who strikes the count.</i> <i>Strike him out!</i> [Dick] We had a good life.

I became a churchgoer, I got baptized in the lake.

And then I got my mother and my stepfather, I said, "You should join the church."

It was like creating a monster.

[laughs] I mean, she-- she just took to it and I started fading away from it.

There were just too many questions in my mind that religion did not answer.

And that created a big disparity there.

I mean, she, she always felt... ...I'm-- like, I'm not gonna be saved!

I mean, she still loved me, it was just the idea that... I'm going to hell.

[chuckles] - So-- - [film reel whirring] - [faint choir singing] - I wish I could sit down with my mother and tell her why I felt the way I felt.

Because I thought it was the greatest thing she had going for her.

Her church was her life.

I just wasn't a part of it.

And I feel a guilt or something about it.

She was great.

No, no.

[young Dick] <i>When I graduated</i> <i>from high school, I enrolled</i> <i>at Philadelphia College</i> <i>of Art in the evening.</i> [Dick] What I wanted to do was make a living doing art.

So I really didn't learn how to paint in s-- in art school.

I learned how to design, I learned type, I learned color.

But I always had painting on my mind.

So I started to look at John Singer Sargent.

A contemporary to him was Joaquín Sorolla, who was a Spanish artist.

Anders Zorn, who was a Swedish artist.

And I just learned from them.

I learned from them by buying every book that I could get my hands on, looking and studying and reading about their techniques.

John Singer Sargent was painting in a realistic way, but loosely.

I want somebody to look at my stuff and say, "A person did that.

It's not a photograph."

And a current player, Mike Trout, done in a very loose way, which I enjoy doing.

I don't know, you know, how my public accepts that.

I think they like what I do.

I mean, I, I do it because it's really pleasing and it creates an image that is not typical.

So for that standpoint, I-- I, I hope it's appreciated.

I sold it, so somebody liked it.

I like to do paintings that are narratives.

So I don't rely on one photograph to do that.

I try to do that combining a variety of photos so that the image is basically my invention.

And then I, on the photograph itself, I do a grid, so that I know that Aaron Judge's body is between, uh, number six across and so many down.

It doesn't mean-- whatever I s-- you see-- you might see here is not necessarily what's gonna appear here.

I might change some of this as I do-- 'cause I'm always editing my, my work.

Many painters use the grid method.

Uh, da Vinci did it, Vermeer did it.

It's speeding up the work so you can get to the real juicy part of the painting, which is the painting.

The pencil drawing that I've done here... ...it's-- all it does is position my body parts and what have you.

I still have to do that likeness there.

[young Dick] <i>What the collectors do</i> <i>is collect memories.</i> <i>And what I try to do</i> <i>is provide them</i> <i>a reliable image</i> <i>of their memory.</i> <i>I m-- I mean, i-- if--</i> <i>if it's Mickey Mantle</i> <i>that gave that person joy</i> <i>when he was a boy,</i> <i>I want him to look</i> <i>like Mickey Mantle.</i> <i>When he sees that painting,</i> <i>that it's Mickey Mantle.</i> [Dick] Likeness is important to me.

But my main concern is to make a painting.

- [crowd indistinctly speaking] - [commentator] <i>Dizzy Dean,</i> <i>the greatest pitcher</i> <i>in Cardinals' history.</i> [Dick] It's realistic because he really swings like that.

Fans really are excited about that.

But that doesn't mean exact likeness.

[commentator] <i>There's a long strike!</i> <i>That one is going way up!</i> - [Dick] <i>The impressionist part of it is...</i> - [commentator] <i>Off the roof--</i> <i>...doing something</i> <i>with brushwork that's appealing.</i> [commentator] <i>That hit the transformer up there.</i> [Dick] I<i>t's a feeling</i> <i>that you're capturing.</i> [gentle music] [young Dick] <i>Some of the faces have folds</i> <i>all over the place.</i> <i>Some of the old ball players,</i> <i>you know, like the Eddie Planks</i> <i>and the Rube Waddells</i> <i>were all hard-drinking guys.</i> <i>And it showed</i> <i>in some of their faces.</i> <i>For example, Grover Cleveland Alexander.</i> <i>When I'm doing the painting,</i> <i>I'm not just looking</i> <i>to copy a face.

I mean, he--</i> <i>his was a, a tragic</i> <i>kind of life in later years.</i> <i>And every time I saw</i> <i>a photograph of him,</i> <i>I-- there was a lot</i> <i>of pathos to his face.</i> <i>I wanted to communicate that.</i> [Dick] <i>It's what art is.</i> Baseball pitchers wear their stories on their faces, don't they?

To look at Grover Cleveland Alexander, one of the greatest pitchers of them all, perhaps you can see both his genius on the mound and the terrible scars he carried from World War I. He spent his final years drifting from place to place, homeless, drinking to escape his pain.

When asked late in life if he was the great pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander, he quietly said, "I used to be."

Rube Waddell led the league in strikeouts six years in a row, but his greatest ambition, strangely, was to be a fireman.

His manager, Connie Mack, said that old Rube always wore red shirts, just in case a fire bell rang.

They say Smokey Joe Williams threw so hard that he needed two catchers, one to start the game and a second to come after the first catcher's hand was too swollen to continue.

Smokey Joe loved pitching so much, he used to keep a baseball under his pillow when he slept.

When Bob Feller was a boy, he used to throw baseballs against a barn on his father's farm.

That is, until one of his fastballs busted through the wood.

When he was 17, 17, he pitched against the St.

Louis Cardinals and threw so hard that a catcher named Bruce Ogrodowski saw one pitch turn white and pleaded, "Can you please just get me out of here in one piece?"

Phil Niekro's father was a coal miner.

He learned how to throw a knuckleball after hurting his arm, and then he taught it to his son.

When a scout came to sign Phil Niekro for $500, his father said, "I'm sorry, we just don't have that kind of money."

Baseball has always had such wonderful heroes.

- That right?

- [interviewer] We're good.

This is, uh, a portrait of my hero, my wife.

[gentle music] Back in college, in my first course, I walked into the room, and sitting by the window with a empty seat next to her was this girl who was just, "Wow, what a pretty girl."

That's my first drawing of, of her over there, and it's a little watercolor, kind of pencil sketch.

There were conferences after class, alphabetically.

Her name was Waite, my name was Perez.

There was nobody in between us and a lot of people ahead of us.

There were no people in between Perez and Waite.

No Smiths, no Thomases, no whatever.

So that, when we had to wait to have our conferences with Mrs.

Gratz, we waited together... [laughing] because everybody else went ahead of us.

So he would buy me coffee, we would talk, and I thought, "He is such a sweet guy.

I hope nobody breaks his heart."

[Dick] <i>I took her out to dinner once,</i> <i>which is a big deal.</i> <i>I guess I must have</i> <i>swept her off her feet.</i> <i>We met in May</i> <i>and got married in October.</i> [gentle music] [Mary] I'm a scientist... [laughing] he's an artist, and we're kind of "opposites attract" or something?

My friend across the street asked us at our 50th wedding anniversary party, "How do you do it?"

And I say, "You don't die and you don't divorce."

[laughing] Those are the basics.

[Dick] <i>She believes in honesty</i> <i>and she will tell you</i> <i>what she feels,</i> <i>which means that</i> <i>whenever I do a painting,</i> <i>I say, "Lou,</i> <i>take a look at this.

"</i> <i>If she says, "Yes, it's good,"</i> <i>I know it's good.</i> [Mary] Sometimes I'm critical.

Sometimes I'll tell him, "This guy's nose doesn't go that way."

Like the Aaron Judge.

Aaron is handsomer than that.

[laughs] [Dick] She's always been a beautiful-- even now, when we're rolling in the eighties.

And when I adore a beautiful person, that's who I wanna paint.

There's still photos here that I would love to paint of her, but, uh, I've gotta finish Aaron Judge.

[laughs] - [commentator] <i>Left field, right field seats are jammed.</i> - [indistinct mumbling] - [blowing] <i>-People looking to grab that home run number 62.</i> [gentle music] <i>-There's strike, 1-1.</i> [commentator] <i>Judge's hitting 3-10</i> <i>after the one hit in game one.</i> [Dick] Originally, the Aaron Judge painting that I wanted to do and started was him doing what he does, the crowd standing up, yelling, waving their hands.

But it takes a while to do a painting - and before I knew it... ...Mr.

Judge had done something extraordinary.

- [commentator] <i>...go, go!</i> - [Dick] This is the actual moment he hit that ball.

This would make a certainly more appropriate... keepsake for the history of baseball.

[commentator] <i>...62!</i> <i>Aaron Judge is the AL-king!</i> <i>Case closed!</i> [gentle music] [John Thorn] I tend not to like baseball novels.

I tend not to like baseball films.

I do like baseball art.

And to the extent that it, it differs from my mind's eye recollection of the game.

It's better.

It's better than the game.

The frozen moment.

Time stopped.

This is what art does.

Dick Perez's work, because of the great span from the Knickerbocker era to last night's ball game, to Aaron Judge hitting 62 home runs, it's all there in a real emotional sense, the drift of the game.

[music continues] In the end, it's an impression of baseball.

He is an impressionistic painter of both faces and scenes.

[Dick] I call this <i>La Danse,</i> homage to Matisse.

He had made a-- a, an image that had dancers going around like that.

I think it's a good example of the ballet of baseball.

The follow-through that the pitcher has.

The wonderful movement that players have when they're leaping for a ball, saving a home run from being hit.

Or the second baseman or shortstop making the throw to first on a double play.

It's poetic.

Robert Frost, a great baseball fan, said, "A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom."

Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella, poet in his own way, said it this way, "You gotta be a man to play this game, but you gotta have a lot of little boy in you too."

You fall in love with baseball when you're young, and then the game keeps you young, the players keep you young!

A 10-year-old sees Shohei Ohtani hit a long home run today and the feeling is no different than when a 10-year-old watched Albert Pujols hit a long home run 20 years ago.

Or Harmon Killebrew, a half century ago.

Or Josh Gibson in the days of the Depression.

It is no different than when a 10-year-old saw Babe Ruth himself hit a long home run and then run pigeon-toe around the bases like he was dancing.

"I get back to the dugout and they ask what kind of pitch I hit," the Bambino said, "and I tell them I don't know, except it looked good."

[laughs] That's poetry.

And that's baseball too.

[gentle music] This is a painting that I started about 30 years ago.

And I haven't finished because money making got in the way.

It's punchball, which is a pastime that I remember as a child.

Someday, I will finish this painting.

I started working for this publishing company as an art director.

One of the accounts we had was the Villanova Sports Department, and the sports information director was a fellow by the name of Jim Murray.

Jim Murray has the fortuity to be hired by the Philadelphia Eagles as a general manager.

And I go with him.

It changed my life.

It was just a play to really develop my skills.

The only way you can get to do the way I do things is by doing and doing and doing and doing and doing.

<i>Success is an alloy of talent,</i> <i>hard work, and luck.</i> Because of my work with the Eagles and the fortuity of that, I came to the Phillies, I became their official artist.

That was a big change.

That was more work than I did for the Eagles.

I got bad stuff, I'll show you.

I mean, i-- you know, that was published.

And I think, "Oh, my God, look at this terrible thing!"

[light lively music] This is the worst painting I've ever done.

I don't know why I don't throw it away.

I guess, as the years go by, I'll probably keep it even more and then I'll have it cremated with me.

Failing is part of the game of learning how to paint.

And it's with failing that you learn.

[chuckling] I never did anything as bad again.

This is, uh, Mike Schmidt.

The original of this painting was hanging in the Hall of Fame.

And I happened to be in the room at that time.

And there was a child, a kid, and he was looking at this painting and he goes, "Wow!"

And I heard that and I said, "I wonder if he's talking about the fact that it's Mike Schmidt and it's his hero - or the fact that it's a good painting."

- [interviewer laughs] I became part of the Phillies family, which earned me a World Series ring when they won in 2008.

Picasso doesn't have a World Series ring.

Matisse doesn't have a World Series ring.

I have a World Series ring.

So that makes me really proud.

[commentator 1 indistinctly speaking] <i>...and people watch that one goes.</i> [commentator 2 indistinctly speaking] [crowd cheering] [Dick] Well, nice to see one of th-- a <i>Diamond King </i>next to my hero, Mickey Mantle.

Right next to each other, that's great.

You know, baseball cards.

Probably one of the main components... ...that popularized the game.

This has to be my favorite section.

All these old cards, way back.

Wow!

That was the beginning of it all.

[gentle music] I don't see any <i>Allen & Ginter.</i> In 1887, a Virginia tobacco company called Allen & Ginter created cards of American stars to put in their cigarette packs.

They called the set <i>Allen & Ginter World Champions.</i> [Dick] There they are!

The cards featured a vast variety of celebrities, from boxers John L. Sullivan to Jack Dempsey to sharpshooter Annie Oakley to the Japanese wrestling sensation Matsuda Sorakichi.

Ten of the cards featured baseball players.

Yes!

My inspiration.

[John] <i>These are some</i> <i>of the first baseball cards.</i> [Dick] <i>Allen & Ginter.</i> They were very inspirational to me to bring art back to cards.

As baseball became more popular, baseball cards became as important to fans, especially young fans, as the game itself.

To hold a Honus Wagner card or Sam Crawford card or Lefty Grove card or Travis Jackson card was, in a way, like holding the whole game in the palm of your hand.

- Ooh.

- [indistinct chatter] What do you get when you put a nickel in there?

A card?

That looks good.

Three cards for 25 cents.

Anybody have a quarter?

- [interviewer] You got crazy-- - Yeah!

Co-- You know how many you can-- you keep getting t-- wanting to get-- "I wanna get a Roberto Clemente!

I wanna get a Roberto Clemente!"

Oh, look at this!

A 1953 Topps.

[John] In the early 1950s, the gum company Topps created the first modern baseball cards with the players' names and faces, their team's logo, their positions, and remarkably, the statistics on the back.

They were beautiful!

The timing was perfect.

The war was over, the American boom was on, and the 1950s was a golden age for baseball.

It was the decade of Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente and Frank Robinson and Stan Musial.

In New York, three centerfielders towered over the game.

In Brooklyn, there was Duke Snider.

In Upper Manhattan, Willie Mays chased down fly balls at the Polo grounds.

And in the Bronx, there was perhaps the greatest hero of them all, Dick Perez's hero, Mickey Mantle.

His father, "Mutt," named him Mickey after the great catcher, Mickey Cochrane, and raised him to become a great ball player himself.

The Mick did indeed become a great ball player, but it took Mickey Mantle a long time to accept being a hero to so many.

"Heroes are people who are all good, with no bad in them," he used to say.

It wasn't until the last years of his life that he came to understand just how much he meant to people.

"God knows no one is perfect," Bob Costas said at Mantle's memorial.

"And God knows there's something special about heroes."

[anchor] <i>Another thing that Dick does</i> <i>is postcards.</i> <i>This is, uh, Roberto Clemente.</i> <i>That's probably</i> <i>my pivotal body of work,</i> <i>is the Hall of Fame</i> <i>art postcard series.</i> <i>The Eagles and the Phillies were first in my</i> <i> life, then I met another gentleman.</i> [Dick] <i>Frank Steele.

He was brilliant.</i> <i>He just happened</i> <i>to love my work,</i> <i>and Peggy loved my work.</i> <i>And they were</i> <i>a very close couple.</i> [Peggy] Frank and I were collectors at heart, and we used to love to go to flea markets.

- [indistinct chatter] - [Frank] <i>One day, about six summers ago,</i> <i>Peggy and I were</i> <i>at a flea market, saw a counter</i> <i>of memorabilia and debris,</i> <i>and in the middle of all that</i> <i>was a Mel Ott baseball card.</i> <i>I said, "Golly,</i> <i>we gotta buy that!</i> <i>That's the one I had</i> <i>when I was a kid</i> <i>and my mother threw out.

"</i> [reporter] <i>Don't think for a moment</i> <i>that Peggy is a late convert</i> <i>to Frank's hobby.

She's</i> <i>a lifelong baseball freak.</i> <i>I was one of three girls</i> <i>and I was the tomboy.</i> <i>My father enjoyed sports</i> <i>and I was the only one</i> <i>who took any interest in it.</i> <i>And I would spend many hours</i> <i>watching games with him</i> <i>and that's where I started.</i> Our next purchase, we were at another flea market, and there was a card, a Pittsburgh player, George Miller, 1888, <i>Allen & Ginter.</i> The woman running the table said, "Give me a dollar for that card and get it off my table.

I put it out every week and nobody has any interest."

Well, we snapped that up.

So we just continued to put a collection together and the more we collected, our entire house, every room had something to do with baseball.

[light lively music] We had offices with the Philadelphia Eagles, so we met Jimmy Murray, and every time Jimmy Murray saw Frank, he'd say, "You've gotta meet Dick Perez.

You and Dick would really hit it off."

And after about the third or fourth time Jimmy said that, Frank said, "Pick up the phone and call Dick."

Dick and his wife were at our house for dinner, and after dinner, Dick was looking at our collection and admiring different pieces, but he saw this George Miller card, and he actually took it off the wall and said, "Why don't they make cards like this anymore?"

<i>We told him because there wasn't an artist</i> <i>to paint them</i> <i>and there wasn't</i> <i>an Irishman to market them.</i> <i>Dick responded,</i> <i>"I can paint like that.

"</i> He was, "Well, if you can paint like that, paint like that, and I'll go door to door and sell them."

And I said, "Okay."

[young Dick] <i>I had an idea</i> <i>about doing color artwork</i> <i>for all the baseball</i> <i>Hall of Famers.</i> [Peggy] <i>That was really the </i> <i>beginning of an idea</i> <i>that we all started</i> <i>to percolate.</i> <i>And within two weeks,</i> <i>Dick came in with five pieces</i> <i>that he had done of Babe Ruth in the style</i> <i>of the</i> Allen & Ginter <i>card.</i> [Frank] <i>The Hall of Fame had</i> <i>never issued a set of art cards.</i> <i>We perceived a vacuum in the collecting world</i> <i>as a result of that.</i> <i>We thought that we could make</i> <i>a marriage, so to speak,</i> <i>between Dick's talents</i> <i>on one hand</i> <i>and the collector's needs</i> <i>on the other hand.</i> <i>And as a result of that, we formed a company</i> <i>in late 1979,</i> <i>called Perez-Steele Galleries.</i> [John Thorn] Frank was a Wall Street guy.

He was always very well dressed.

Frank was self-consciously a dandy.

And this permeated his being.

When he wanted to see you later, he'd say, "I will see you anon."

There was nobody in the world like him.

He had a connection to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

[Peggy] <i>We wanted the Hall of Fame logo</i> <i>on these cards</i> <i>and we would pay them a royalty.</i> <i>That was new to the Hall</i> <i>'cause they had not had</i> <i>any royalty income</i> <i>at that point.</i> <i>They liked the idea, and Perez-Steele</i> <i>Art Postcards was born.</i> Oh, my God, was that an exciting time!

[Peggy] Dick would come in after he had finished maybe five or six pieces, and we would have an art show.

Frank and I would study it, we would talk about it, we'd "ooh" and "aah."

It was a great opportunity to enjoy the art and appreciate what he had created.

[Dick] There were 260, at the time, Hall of Famers.

I would do 30, and then, with a return card that said, "Sign me up for the next 30."

[Peggy] <i>We thought</i> <i>that we were gonna sell them</i> <i>much faster than we did.</i> <i>But after a couple of months,</i> <i>Frank got a phone call</i> <i>from Bill Madden,</i> <i>who writes</i> <i>for the</i> New York Daily News.

- [clacks and chimes] - [Bill] I'd seen them advertised in something called <i>Sports Collector's Digest.</i> And I looked at them, I said, "My God, these are fantastic!

I gotta write about these!"

Color of the uniforms and the facial expressions, it was breathtaking.

[Peggy] That produced a lot of sales.

So the word started to spread.

Joe DiMaggio was very angry with us because every card in the set cost the same to produce, so they were all the same price.

[Dick] "Billy Herman's card is 50 cents.

Your card pie-- Whoa, whoa, wait a minute.

You sold my card for the same price as Billy Herman?"

And DiMaggio took great exception to that.

He decided he would no longer sign Perez-Steele cards.

When they would do autograph shows in New York, at the bottom of the ad, it would say, "Joe will sign no Perez-Steele cards."

Well, at that time, a lot of people didn't know about Perez-Steele cards, but they wanted to find out, and that was what really put us over the top in terms of selling out.

Because people wanted this thing that Joe wasn't going to sign.

It was the best thing Joe could've ever done for us.

[camera shutters clicking] [Dick] Before you know it, we had an established brand of doing color cards, Hall of Famers revisiting card designs of the past.

- [light buzzing] -And we did one that was called <i>Great Moments,</i> where we took a great moment of a player and patterned them after the <i>Turkey Reds.</i> [light lively music] And then we did <i>Celebration,</i> which was my favorite of all.

And they were all sellouts.

I mean, it was just incredible.

- [Peggy] <i>The orders started pouring in.</i> <i>We got to the point</i> <i>where we would do</i> <i>close to 1000 a day.</i> - [clicks] <i>-And I figured how to get</i> <i>all of it produced and shipped.</i> Peggy was the nuts and bolts of the operation.

[Peggy] We had three people who all had different abilities creating something that was so spectacular.

[music increases] [Bill] None of this would've happened without Frank.

Dick was an artist and he needed somebody like Frank to do this.

Frank made sure that everybody got to know about Dick Perez.

Frank was creating the ideas and Dick was creating the art.

And it was a beautiful marriage.

[Dick] Frank was my Colonel Parker.

He fought for me and argued for me and promoted me and, and bombastically-- blowing my horn.

- Now I had a following.

<i>-From the richest lawyer to the-- uh, President Reagan.</i> <i>He owns set number one</i> <i>of the art postcards.</i> The original of this was given to Ronald Reagan because he played Grover Alexander in the movie <i>The Winning Team.</i> And here is the painting of... [chuckling] Arky Vaughan that is in President Clinton's library.

[John Thorn] What we love about Perez's cards was that he devoted as much attention to the obscure Hall of Famers as he did to the famous ones.

So, while we had ample portraits of Ruth and Gehrig and Cobb and Wagner, we didn't have so many of Jim O'Rourke.

[Dick] What we found out was that people wanted to collect these cards to have them signed by the player.

I remember going to the Hall of Fame and seeing Yogi Berra, he had 'em all stacked, he was getting 'em all signed by his fellow Hall of Famers.

[Peggy] One of the bonus cards was the <i>Perez-Steele Galleries,</i> and Dick had done a portrait of Frank, me, and himself.

And Yogi came over to the table and he said, - "Will you sign my card?"

[Dick] <i>That fed the whole fantasy world</i> <i>of the Perez-Steele cards.</i> [Peggy] <i>It almost seemed wrong</i> <i>that we would have so much fun</i> <i>'cause this was our life,</i> <i>this was our business.</i> [John Thorn] <i>I always looked at Frank</i> <i>and Peggy and Dick</i> <i>as this little family,</i> <i>this little cottage industry</i> <i>down there in Philadelphia.</i> [Dick] <i>It was three people</i> <i>who came together,</i> <i>the American dream of success.</i> Baseball claimed to be the national pastime long before it actually was.

Baseball, like America itself, was weighed down by its prejudices, by small-mindedness, by its refusal to change.

At every stage, pioneers emerged to burst through intolerance and make the game look more like a changing nation.

[commentator] <i>That's two out, Greenberg is up.</i> Hank Greenberg was the son of Romanian Jewish immigrants.

[commentator] <i>Greenberg was out yesterday</i> <i>observing Yom Kippur.</i> His father, David, worked his way from textile worker to owner of his own factory and he expected his son to join him in the business.

But his son only had eyes for baseball.

[commentator] <i>Hank's big bat</i> <i>was missed out here yesterday.</i> There had been a handful of Jewish baseball players, but none of them were stars.

Greenberg was a star.

He became one of the most powerful hitters in the game.

[commentator] <i>Here he is,</i> <i>Greenberg single to left!</i> And he fought through the anti-Semitism that was rampant in America and the world in the years leading up to World War II.

In 1934, with his Detroit Tigers in the middle of a pennant race, he did not play on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.

The poet Edgar Guest wrote, "We shall miss him on the infield, we shall miss him at the bat, but he's true to his religion, and I honor him for that."

[gentle music] [Dick] This was given to Hank Greenberg by the Detroit team.

They bought the original to give to him as a present.

And he wrote me a really nice note about how he was gonna hang this next to his Gauguin.

I was from a displaced persons camp in occupied Germany.

Just as Dick wished to be an American, to become an American, so did I. And I had a notion of what America was.

And the person I attached to, unlike Dick, was not Mickey Mantle, but Jackie Robinson.

Though I lived in the Bronx when I first came here, I became a Brooklyn Dodger fan because they were the team that seemed, to me, to represent the underdog, which is how I saw myself, a Jewish stateless person.

As we talk about Dick and Jackie Robinson, his portrait of Jackie hangs right outside the wall.

This has always been, to me, a touchstone of Dick Perez's work.

And, for me, a connection of Dick's life and mine.

- [birds chirping] -[wind blowing] [light jazz music] [John] For many years, people did not wanna talk about the Negro Leagues.

There were those who were ashamed of it, and others who simply did not want to acknowledge its existence.

Between the late 19th century, after the collapse of the Reconstruction, and April 15th, 1947, the day Jackie Robinson played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers, there was more than half a century of African American baseball that was all but lost to history.

And what a game that was.

Some of the greatest players in baseball history barnstormed from town to town, entirely unnoticed by white America.

Oscar Charleston was a powerful hitter and breathtakingly fast baserunner who, according to one contemporary, could actually smell where the ball was going to be hit.

Cool Papa Bell was the fastest player of his time, or probably any time.

Satchel Paige said he once gave up a line drive up the middle of the bell and he quickly turned to see the ball hit Cool Papa in the butt as he slid into second base.

Martín Dihigo could play every position on the diamond with equal brilliance.

They used to say his only weakness was that he couldn't play two positions at the same time.

There were so many more great players and they were being lost to history.

[Bob] The Black Diamond, Jose Mendez, Willie "El Diablo" Wells, "Ese Hombre," Willard Brown, "That Man."

[laughs] We look at the Negro Leagues as an art form.

The way they played the game was artistic.

And Dick's work brought them to life.

He brought such honor and dignity to a story that had not been treated in an honorable and dignified manner.

[light jazz music] Dick has done what American historians have failed to do.

And that was to acknowledge this chapter of baseball and Americana.

He filled a void.

Dick has helped people remember - these heroes of the Negro Leagues.

- [faint crowd cheering] Ray Dandridge, Wilber "Bullet" Rogan, The Gobbler, Norman "Turkey" Stearnes, "Pistol" Pete Hill.

[Dick] I had to invent a lot of that.

So most of my Negro League action paintings are invented.

That's one of my favorite parts of it.

Finding these gems that I can create images that nobody's ever seen before.

They say that life imitates art.

But for the greatest artists, it works the other way too.

In San Diego, this was in 2005, a Philadelphia Phillies ball player named Kenny Lofton raced over to the legendary baseball scout and spokesman Buck O'Neil.

Lofton was so excited he could barely speak.

"Buck," he said, "I need you to meet someone!"

"Who you got?"

Buck asked.

"You just need to meet him!"

Kenny said.

"He's a young Josh Gibson!"

And with that, Lofton brought over a bashful 25-year-old rookie slugger named Ryan Howard.

[laughing] And Buck looks at him, he says, "Son, you got some power?"

He sheepishly said, "Yes, sir."

He said, "Don't be ashamed of that power.

No, no, no, you keep swinging that bat."

And he kept swinging that bat.

This is a portrait of Josh Gibson, famous Negro League slugger.

I had a painting that I did of Ryan Howard and I really loved that pose.

So I flipped it around to make it a right-handed hitter and then I got the head from somewhere and I made up the background.

[light jazz music] This man, my wife and I had dinner a number of times.

His name is Judy Johnson, he was a scout after his career for the Phillies.

So we had something in common.

The signage behind him are the actual signs that existed in the stadiums of the Negro Leagues.

For him to be able to draw that kind of inspiration, to learn about Judy Johnson, to understand the kind of arm and range that Judy Johnson had, and then to be able to visualize and then apply that to canvas so the rest of us could get a perspective of how great Judy Johnson was-- that's the beauty of art.

Those things just kind of give you chills.

[light ethereal music] [Dick] To me, the process is really the important thing.

Making a painting and then looking at it and being satisfied with it.

There are works that I've done that have just come together magically.

And then there are works that I've struggled with.

And then years later, I look and I say, "Damn it, that is good!

I did well there."

The reason baseball is a good subject for me is that I understand that game.

I played that game.

I understand the fandom, I understand the idol worship.

I've learned how to say something about a sport that I love to no end.

[anchor] <i>We wanna talk about some special work</i> <i>that Dick has done</i> <i>for a lot of the boys and girls out there</i> <i>who are collectors.</i> <i>We're talking about</i> <i>baseball cards.</i> - [clattering] -[gentle music] [Bill] 1981 was a watershed year.

Uh, it was the end of Topps's monopoly and it was the beginning of the baseball card explosion.

It was baseball card stores opening up in every little town across the United States!

Then they started having these card conventions.

It exploded!

[Peggy] It was a time that you could not repeat because timing was everything.

[machine beeping] In 1980, Fleer had sued Topps and the courts determined that Topps had a monopoly and that there would be three baseball card companies.

It would be Topps, Fleer, and Donruss, which was a bubble gum company in Memphis, Tennessee.

[Bill] President of the company is a guy named Stewart Lyman.

I called him and I told him, "I'm doing this story about this lawsuit and you guys getting into the baseball card business."

He says, "Yeah, we're really happy to be in the baseball card business, but we have only one problem."

I said, "What's that?"

He says, "We don't know anything about baseball.

Do you know anybody who knows anything about baseball who might be able to help us out down here?"

I said, "As a matter of fact, I do know someone."

He said, "Who's that?"

I said, "Me."

And he hired me to be the majordomo for Donruss baseball cards.

I said, "We have to do things with our set that's gonna separate us from Topps and Fleer.

And I have a couple of ideas."

One of my ideas was Dick Perez.

"This will really set us apart, because Dick Perez is becoming a pretty well-known artist now and he could be ours."

It was fortuity that a new card company came into existence and didn't know what they were gonna do.

And Frank and I were there to offer them a solution.

- [popping] -[Peggy] One of the things that the courts had determined was that while Topps could still use confectionary product, they could use their bubble gum in their packs, Fleer and Donruss, they had to have a product of value, but it could not be a confectionary product.

They said, "Well, maybe we could do some kind of a baseball puzzle."

Frank decided to play on his, uh, relationship with the baseball Hall of Fame.

And he said, "We could have Dick do a portrait of a Hall of Famer and we could have the Hall of Fame logo on that, which would create a royalty for the Hall, which would give the puzzle a value."

And the puzzles were created.

[Dick] He went to Donruss and said, "Listen, how would you feel about being the official baseball card of the Hall of Fame?"

Topps was not it.

Fleer wasn't it.

Donruss was it.

- [gentle music] -[engine rumbling] [Peggy] As Frank and I were coming back in the car, I said, "You know, there's a phrase here that you have in this contract.

This is an escalating royalty.

The Hall's going to get more the more they sell."

I said, "That's okay if we're only doing one to five million.

- [tires screeching] - But has anybody figured out what happens when they sell ten million and how much the Hall's going to get?"

And Frank said, "Well, so far, you're the only one who's noticed that phrase.

So let's hope Donruss hasn't paid attention."

And they didn't.

[Bill] I remember Frank always telling me this.

"Have artist.

Will draw."

That was his famous line about Dick.

[Dick] I talked to Frank and I said, "Let's create a subset created from art.

And each team we represent, we'll take the best player, you know, in that team."

They liked the idea and they let me loose.

[soft scratching] [Bill] We called them "our Diamond Kings."

They liked it so much that, "We're gonna make Diamond Kings the first 26 cards in the set."

Dick was just so good.

I knew it would work.

There were ten Hall of Famers in Dick Perez's first set of Donruss <i>Diamond Kings.</i> And while it was always a thrill to pull any Diamond King from the pack, to find this little piece of magic inside with the rest of the cards, there was something extra special about finding Dick's painting of an all-time great.

To see how he captured the essence of a player who would transcend time.

Of course, not all Diamond Kings were Hall of Famers.

Some were fleeting stars.

But ten Hall of Famers out of 26 Diamond Kings is a .385 batting average.

Every Diamond King would happily take that.

Complete... [gentle music] <i>...Diamond King</i> career... ...is here in this binder.

The very first <i>Diamond King,</i> and I painted him first, was-- [boy] <i>Pete Rose!</i> [man] <i>Those were the coolest cards.</i> <i>Yeah!

An Ozzie Diamond King.</i> [man] As a kid, opening packs of cards, it was about pulling the Diamond Kings of your favorite players.

<i>Oh, yeah!

It's Tom Seaver</i> <i>as a Diamond King.</i> Collecting cards in 1982, I swear if you would've said, like, "Name an artist, any artist," I would've said Dick Perez.

Looked at-- first time I ever recognized art as something was on his cards.

[Dick] <i>Mid-year before</i> <i>the following year</i> <i>when these</i> Diamond Kings <i>were gonna come out,</i> <i>Frank and I would get together.</i> <i>It was based on that the guy</i> <i>had a great previous year</i> <i>and that he was having</i> <i>a decent year this year.</i> <i>They never suggested players,</i> <i>they never told us,</i> <i>uh, "Not that guy.

"</i> <i>John Mayberry.</i> When we first started doing <i>Diamond Kings</i> in 1982, the Blue Jays had nobody.

"Well, who's gonna be the Diamond King?"

And we just, uh, process of elimination, decided on John Mayberry because he had been playing the longest.

He did have a couple of 20 home run seasons.

So we just picked John Mayberry and I'm sure Blue Jays were relieved that they had somebody.

[woman] "Who deserves a Dick Perez treatment?"

It was like a debate in my house, my friends, with my dad.

[Dick] Now, I'm out to it in 1984, which I changed the design a little bit and, uh, eh, as I would say, to my Puerto Rican friends, "Is okay."

Bruce Sutter, Wade Boggs.

[man] When I was a kid, I would flip through packs, and the one card that always caught my attention was the Dick Perez <i>Diamond Kings</i> cards.

[Bill] No question, they were setting us apart.

We were known as the card company that had the Dick Perez <i>Diamond Kings.</i> [Dick] I knew that what I was doing was very different from what every card company was doing.

I was achieving what I wanted to achieve for my own enjoyment, to have art in baseball cards!

And then, there's this guy, Iván Calderón.

Best beard I ever painted.

Dick presented these players in a different way than we were seeing everywhere else.

The <i>Diamond Kings</i> still have this iconic quality.

It's not merely iconographic, it is also iconic.

So we're up to 1989... [chuckles] ...and my backgrounds are getting a little wilder.

I don't know now what I was thinking in some of these.

Oh, here's my, my favorite, Nolan Ryan.

There's something about the background in him.

It has a very pleasing look.

The thing that kept coming back to us as people collected our cards was they-- they so loved the art.

So we knew we had created something pretty special.

Uh, this is one of my favorite <i>Diamond Kings.</i> Craig Biggio.

I love the mask, all right?

And here, a Seattle Mariner.

Ah!

Puerto Rican.

[man] Dick Perez was a huge part of opening packs for me, as a young kid.

I always wanted to know who the Diamond King was.

- [camera shutter clicks] - [Bill] <i>Kids buying baseball cards</i> <i>-got to know Dick Perez.</i> - [camera shutter clicking] <i>And they got to know him</i> <i>every year, more and more.</i> I thought they were doing okay because I did it for 15 years.

But I didn't get any letters from kids who collected them.

It was only after those kids grew up.

The art cards meant something to them.

[Craig] I've known about this guy since I was a little kid, since I was collecting baseball cards and looking at his <i>Diamond Kings</i> work.

So now, actually meeting him in person, it's, it's really something else.

[Dick] This is a time when I really wanted to experiment.

There is a very distinct way of handling tones.

They look at it and they see a transition of-- from shadow to light without blending, which is what realists would do.

And it's the artist's statement, it becomes really an art statement.

Yeah, 1995 was the best.

My favorite card is this one.

It's Chili Davis.

I didn't care what anybody would say, but these 1995, they were creative portraits, is what they are.

Oh, my God!

This-- I don't complain about the way he treated this painting.

The only one that is done in the same technique as the ballplayers were done.

This is truly the one card that makes me part of the collection of <i>Diamond Kings.</i> I wish it would-- been as a player, but, you know, you can't have everything.

- [indistinct chatter] [Bill] <i>Dick's affiliation with Donruss</i> <i>really put him on the map</i> <i>because Donruss is a nationwide</i> <i>major card company.</i> <i>Donruss is probably my favorite.</i> <i>-Donruss.</i> <i>-Uh, right now, I'd say Donruss.</i> [Bill] <i>The whole industry is exploding.</i> [man 1] <i>There are a tremendous</i> <i>number of cards</i> <i>being printed each year,</i> <i>in the hundreds of millions,</i> <i>if not billions of cards.</i> [man 2] <i>I don't think</i> <i>there can be oversaturation.</i> <i>Manufacturers</i> <i>ain't got their finger</i> <i>on the pulse of the industry.</i> <i>They know where to stop.</i> [Peggy] The Hall continued to get royalties based on sales 'cause the first year, Donruss did $1 million.

And they were quite happy.

As Donruss continued to sell more and more cards, that $1 million that first year was very minuscule by five years out when Donruss was doing close to $70 or $80 million.

And it helped the Hall to do the building expand that they needed.

- [clanking] -And it's one of the reasons that the Hall is the wonderful facility that it is today because it had this money that it never expected to have.

- [indistinct chatter] - [Dick] And every year after they become very successful, they would blow up my Diamond Kings about like that and hang them all on this high wall in the contemporary area of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

[Peggy] <i>The Hall finally realized</i> <i>that all of this came</i> <i>from these baseball cards.</i> <i>This artist and this</i> <i>Perez-Steele business.</i> - [scissors snipping] - [Dick] <i>The art gallery</i> <i>at the Hall of Fame was called</i> <i>the Donruss Perez-Steele</i> <i>Art Gallery.</i> [John Thorn] Dick became known as the official artist of the Baseball Hall of Fame, which was a title he maintained for decades.

Whoa!

How lucky can anybody get?

When we went to the Hall of Fame, Frank said, "Dick Perez should be your official artist."

That, you know, that was a great achievement.

- [indistinct chatter] - [Peggy] They just had a great love for each other.

It was special.

Frank just so appreciated Dick's ability to do what he did, 'cause he was honest and real and talented.

[Dick] He truly loved me and it was a belief and a commitment that he made to me.

I wouldn't be where I am if it weren't for Frank.

[Bill] Dick was a struggling artist in Philadelphia.

And now, all of a sudden, he's the number one artist in the country for baseball art.

[John Thorn] <i>Official portraits were produced</i> <i>of each year's inductees</i> <i>and only one man</i> <i>could produce them.</i> <i>This lent stature</i> <i>not only to the art,</i> <i>but also to the artist.</i> So many players through the years exuded joy.

You'd watch them play and the space between the stands and the field would shrink to nothing.

And you would be on the field with them, throwing out base runners with Gary Carter, diving for ground balls with Brooks Robinson, slamming the door in the ninth with Lee Smith, stealing a base with Ricky Anderson, and swinging at a pitch way over our heads with Vladimir Guerrero.

But Ichiro?

No one could bring us closer to the field, to the action, than Ichiro.

Everything about him, the way he'd stretch before every at bat.

The way he seemed to take a running start before slapping at the ball.

The breathtaking throws he'd make from the outfield.

[commentator] <i>Ichiro throws something out of Star Wars!</i> [John] When Ichiro left Japan to try and become the first Japanese everyday star in the major leagues, there were so many American doubts.

He carried on his back not only his own baseball future, but the hopes of an entire nation, as he was reminded daily by the crush of Japanese reporters whose only job was to follow him.

[commentator] <i>Ichiro receives a standing ovation.</i> <i>You can see the Japanese flag</i> <i>waving all over the place.</i> He transcended all of it.

Won the Most Valuable Player Award in his first year, quickly became the most popular player in the game and changed baseball forever.

[Dick] Ichiro is a great follower of the game.

He went to the Hall of Fame, and I have a painting hanging there called <i>The Dream.</i> He saw that and he said, "I'd like to buy that."

And the Hall of Fame says, "Well, we can't sell it because it was a gift.

However, we can give you the artist's name and you can ask him to, to duplicate it."

And he had his agent call me, and I said, "No, I'm not doing that."

So he kept on me and kept on me, he said, "Well, we can change it a little bit."

And anyway, one thing led to another, I said-- I said, "Okay."

And he said there's one thing he would like to have on it.

And I said, "What is that?"

And he said, him, his wife, and his dog.

And I said, "But this is Harlem in 1955."

He said, "Yeah, I know."

But he loves the scene.

I told him to hire a photographer and get some photos of him standing, kneeling, looking at me, which I-- that was supposed to be me.

Anyway, he loved it, it hangs in his apartment in Seattle.

[engines rumbling] Going to the Hall of Fame, I went every year.

It was just incredible.

- [indistinct chatter] - Everything was so relaxed.

I would sit down and have nice talks with Willie Stargell or Gaylord Perry.

And, you know, you talk just like fellow lovers of baseball.

[cheerful music playing on radio] <i>♪ ...feeling free... ♪</i> [Dick] One year, I was going to the Hall of Fame weekend.

My wife called me, and she said, "Dick, can you pull over?"

I said, "Yeah."

"Pull over."

So I pulled over, the wife said, "Your mother has died."

[melancholic music] And I wasn't around.

I wasn't there.

- I cried on the way back.

The only thing that we were apart on is religion.

She always wanted me to come back and it was always a thing for her.

It hurt her and I caused that hurt.

In the end... ...because I wasn't what she intended for me, I feel I failed her.

I just know that, uh, there was unfinished business there.

So-- [sharply blows] I-- I don't know why I didn't.

Why-- I-- I mean, that's something that I would have to-- I would have to di-- dig into.

I-- other than Whistler... [laughs] ...I mean, uh, did Monet paint his mother?

I'm going to Google.

How many, uh, well-known artists painted their mother.

[gentle music] <i>Uh, yes, I think</i> <i>the over-saturation</i> <i>of all these baseball cards,</i> <i>Topps, Donruss, Fleer,</i> <i>SCORE, and the names go on,</i> <i>it's just ridiculous</i> <i>at this point.</i> [Bill] Collectors were bleary-eyed.

There was just an over-saturation of these cards.

By the mid '90s, you could see that this was starting to fall apart.

All these little stores around the country were sending returns back to the companies.

"We can't sell these."

That eventually led to the disintegration of all these different card companies, including Donruss.

[melancholic music] I guess the worst part is the ending, you know?

When you're no longer doing it, but you want to.

[soft scratching] Frank got ill.

[Peggy] We were on a trip around the world.

It was absolutely incredible month.

But when we got to Africa, Frank collapsed.

He had oxygen deprivation.

He had a hardening of his lung cells.

And it eventually, you know... ...caused him to pass away.

When we came home, that was in October.

And he died that next June.

And he was on oxygen from that point on.

[Dick] I saw him for the last time.

He was a shadow of himself.

[Peggy] He was fading.

And yet, every time Dick came in, Frank would give him the biggest smile.

It was harder for him to talk as it was harder for him to breathe.

And it was just really hard for Dick to see that.

As-- the devastation that I felt, I felt Dick had experienced a similar devastation.

I don't know what I-- I mean, I know what I wanna say, I don't have the words.

[interviewer] What would you-- if you had 30 seconds with him or something like that, what would you say?

[light inspirational music] [shakily] Look at me.

Look what you did.

Look what you created.

You feel like you have to fulfill all the things he thinks you can do.

Uh, there's nothing better than compliment and us showing somebody that you have confidence in that person and he can achieve what-- what he can achieve.

All he has to do is do it.

And, uh, he instilled that in me.

You did it.

I'm here.

We had done 14 series of Perez-Steele cards.

To continue would've been futile without Frank.

So Peggy and I had a chat and we decided we should do one more for him.

I wanted to do another series 'cause I wanted a Frank Steele card.

- [soft scratching] -So it was time to finish it up and we wanted to finish it up with a great set, which we did.

Dave Winfield was the last Hall of Famer that we did.

Years later, I was at a breakfast with Dave and he said, "I've always loved my Perez-Steele card.

It always makes me feel good when I see it."

[Dick] That is what makes me feel good, is that you somehow have affected people in a good way.

And that's-- uh, come on, everybody should feel that way.

So I do.

[Peggy] It always makes me feel good because it's the permanent piece of American art.

And I am really proud of the fact that I've been part of this because it's forever.

[gentle music] [Dick] <i>That's a dream</i> <i>come true, I mean,</i> <i>'cause there were</i> <i>enough people out there</i> <i>interested</i> <i>in what we did together.</i> [Peggy] The impact that three friends created, not knowing at the time what they were doing-- it was an idea, it was fun, it was art.

It's a permanent piece of Americana.

So we sort of parted and, uh, haven't spoken since.

That thing that united us wasn't there anymore.

You just sort of lose connection.

It's been over 20 years since I've seen Peggy.

Every painting brings its own challenge.

I know what I want the fini-- what the finish to look like, but getting there is... ...is not necessarily predicted.

[soft scratching] Voilà.

I gotta touch it up, but, yeah, that works.

My whole goal is everything in that painting has some sort of aesthetic value that might appeal to a viewer.

And I do that with brushwork and color... ...and the way I might treat certain shadows and certain highlights or the way I would do a background.

I think this is ready.

- [clack] -It's a keeper.

[light jazz music] Maybe for a moment, everybody lost sight of what baseball cards are really about.

Maybe for a moment, baseball cards became investments or commodities or some other grown-up word that has nothing at all to do with the hopes and dreams that baseball cards launched in countless children, Dick Perez among them.

Then, the moment of madness passed.

Topps, among others, realized the eternal truth of baseball is also true of baseball cards.

In order to go forward, you first need to look back, and Topps looked all the way back to <i>Allen & Ginter,</i> to <i>Turkey Reds,</i> to their own early sets, to the art cards that at first dazzled and spellbound young baseball fans.

When they looked to recapture the magic of baseball cards, they went to the man who understood the secret better than anyone.

[Dick] When Topps called, I had to do Topps.

I've always thought that that was the card company.

If I didn't have that on my résumé, I feel like, "Okay, I did <i>Diamond Kings</i> and I did a great job there, I think.

But it wasn't for Topps."

That's the company that made me aware of art in cards in the '50s.

They had developed an appreciation from the card styles of the past.

The first thing I did for them was <i>Allen & Ginter.</i> [music continues] [soft scratching] And then, they started to do the <i>Turkey Reds.</i> They came to me because they know I had done <i>Great Moments</i> with Perez-Steele.

I took the <i>Turkey Reds</i> a step further.

I kind of modernized them by the subject matter that I put in there.

I wanted to have enough imagery of the original <i>Turkey Reds</i> combined with modern players dressed in their modern uniforms.

But I was gonna put them together.

Except for a few things, baseball is unchanged.

The stadiums are different, the uniforms are different.

But if you put a modern player in a modern uniform in a stadium back in the turn of the century, - it's still baseball.

It's not real, I mean, it's not reality, but it is art.

[laughs] Say, the New York Yankees, when they were the Highlanders.

I had that background for a Yankee player, Alex Rodriguez.

The Huntington Grounds where the Red Sox played way back then.

In the Phillies, I remember Shibe Park being an old park.

But before then, it was Baker Bowl.

- [bell tolling] -[indistinct chatter] One of my biggest claims to my legacy is the fact that I have permanent display in a Major League Baseball park.

Thirty-five now paintings forevermore.

And what we have here, I think are one of my proudest achievements.

- [birds chirping] -[bell tolling] There was a new ballpark for the Phillies being built.

[light lively music] What they wanted me to do was portraits of all of these players that were tied to the Philadelphia area, whether they be Philadelphia A's, Philadelphia Phillies, or native sons.

And I said, "Well, you know, that's not enough.

You have an opportunity here.

The Phillies have been in baseball since the 1880s!

And you can show your fans how that team evolved in the way they swung a bat, in the uniforms..." <i>-Well, how do you feel about these uniforms?</i> - [boy] <i>These--</i> <i>-Playing</i> <i>in these kind of things?</i> - [boy] <i>I thi--</i> <i>-I think they're better.</i> - [Dick indistinctly speaks] <i>You think they're better?</i> "...in the fans that are in the stands."

I found out when I was researching these paintings that Ladies' Day goes way back to the early, early game-- days of baseball.

And this, because I drew a lady well-dressed there, I made this <i>Ladies' Day.</i> That's the name of the painting.

These paintings, they represent a matured painter.

But it wasn't always that way.

I'm coming back here and I'm looking at these paintings today and I'm seeing something different in them.

Here my statement was, Chuck Klein was a big hitter for them.

And I wanted to do a big Chuck Klein.

So he takes over the image.

Mighty Chuck Klein.

- [crowd cheering] -[commentator 1] <i>He blew it by.</i> <i>Strike out number five</i> <i>for Carlton!</i> - [commentator 2] <i>Well struck--</i> - [Dick] <i>These paintings will be here for as long</i> <i>as the Phillies exist.</i> <i>Which is a great joy to me.</i> <i>I mean, I'm gonna have</i> <i>an exhibit of art</i> <i>at the team that got me</i> <i>into baseball painting.</i> <i>So I made the full circle.</i> <i>This is Dave Bancroft.</i> <i>An interesting aspect of this</i> <i>that I highlighted was...</i> [man] <i>The gloves were so small</i> <i>that you could put it</i> <i>in your back pocket.</i> My mom died before I reached, uh, this level.

And, uh, I think she would've been proud of me.

It just means a lot to me.

All of this means a lot to me.

Here is Eddie Collins, who played for the Chicago White Sox during the betting scandal.

And he was one of the players that did not participate in throwing a game or betting on the game or anything like that.

So when I had his painting, I kind of subtly wanted to make that point.

That sign was created because of that event.

And I put it right behind him, along with all those wonderful posters that are back there for alcohol and cigarettes, all those things that we don't do today, right?

[chuckles] And in those days-- this is Jimmie Foxx.

In those days, uh, players took care of their equipment.

This painting I call <i>The Art of Boning.</i> Smoothing out the handles, what it does.

It's not done now, but it's nice to bring forth an image that shows that there was something like that that existed in his era.

[Bob] Great artwork invokes some level of emotion.

And through Dick's work, you take a nostalgic journey back in time.

[John Thorn] What Dick does is recreate the feel of an era by recreating its images and its portraiture.

And by doing this, he testifies to the seamless web that is baseball.

From the 1840s or '50s on up, it's the real story of baseball.

That it has a beginning, a middle, and no end.

- [water lapping] -[wind blowing] - [siren distantly wailing] - [indistinct chatter] - [Dick] Lou?

[horn distantly honks] <i>-We have a ritual where I quit...</i> - [inaudible chatter] - [clinking] <i>-...about three or four o'clock now.</i> [clattering] <i>I go upstairs.</i> <i>Then, uh, you know,</i> <i>we like our cocktails.</i> <i>-I make her Manhattans.</i> <i>Best Manhattan she ever had,</i> <i>the ones I make for her.</i> [Mary laughs] [clinking] [gentle music] Mm!

- [interviewer] How is it?

Very, very good.

Want a taste?

- [laughs] -[interviewer] I'm good.

[Dick] <i>Then, we go to the TV.</i> [singing] <i>♪ ...way in the world today ♪</i> <i>-♪ Takes everything you've got ♪</i> - [Dick] <i>♪ Takes-- you've got ♪</i> <i>We're watching</i> Cheers <i>now.</i> <i>♪ Taking a break</i> <i>from all your worries ♪</i> <i>♪ Sure would help a lot ♪</i> - [laughs] -[Dick] <i>The longer you're married,</i> <i>-the more you need each other.</i> - [singing continues] <i>Recognizing the quality</i> <i>of a person,</i> <i>-when they have it...</i> <i>-♪ Where everybody knows your name... ♪</i> <i>...and treasuring it</i> <i>has a lot to do with forgiving,</i> <i>loving, and longevity.</i> [young Dick] <i>See, you're tiny.</i> [laughs] <i>Dick!</i> [Dick] <i>I don't know</i> <i>what I would do-- I mean, uh,</i> <i>the biggest fear</i> <i>I have in life...</i> [young Dick laughs] <i>...is me surviving her.</i> <i>I hope we both live to be 120.</i> <i>Her, 121.</i> [Mary] <i>He was sure when we got married,</i> <i>he would not live beyond 27,</i> <i>which was his father's age.</i> <i>I think we're both</i> <i>aiming for 90.</i> - [wind blowing] -[Dick] We rarely talk about that.

We rarely talk about the end of life.

And I found it's not part of any old person's experience.

To be pondering about-- you only have so much, it doesn't contribute anything to the quality of your life, so we don't dwell on that.

We just enjoy the things that we do.

[John Thorn] Baseball stands outside time in a way that we do not, as humans.

And in our affection for the game, in Dick's documentation of the game, he permits us to stand outside time with the game and think for a moment that we too might endure.

[light whimsical music] [Dick] I told you I'd finish this painting.

[Mary] He is an amazingly prolific artist.

He is still... [chuckling] working when at 81 or so, you know, you could relax a little.

[Dick] After Perez-Steele Galleries ceased doing postcards, - I would continue painting them.

And I don't wanna do them really anymore.

[chuckles] But I can't stop!

- [soft scratching] -I have painted every baseball Hall of Famer.

And I just did the new crop.

Ortiz, Minnie Miñoso, Tony Oliva, Buck O'Neil.

But if Curt Schilling makes it, I don't know if I'll do him.

[laughs] Lou?

[Mary] <i>I still have questions.</i> <i>I don't understand</i> <i>-why he's still working as hard.</i> - [inaudible chatter] <i>I don't feel he's satisfied.</i> It's just a bunch of kids playing, uh, punchball.

[Mary] Maybe is he loves the recognition.

Its validation.

I mean, you didn't need-- all you needed was a Spalding, what they used to call a Spalding, these rubber balls.

And that's all you needed.

You didn't need gloves, - you didn't need bats.

- And we still have them?

- Spaldings?

- Yeah, we still have Spaldings.

- Yeah, I have one, in fact.

- Okay.

Ah, just to have one.

In case I wanted to play punchball again.

[laughing] [Mary] I don't give him a lot of validation.

So maybe this career gives him a lot of validation.

[lively music] Maybe it's he loves getting the letters.

Latest fan mail.

The bulk of them are all these kids that grew up during the <i>Diamond King</i> years and didn't have a way to express themselves then.

And now I'm inundated with hundreds upon hundreds, maybe a few thousand letters, asking for autographs and praising me.

I mean, it's-- [laughs] when somebody considers you better than Leonardo da Vinci, that makes me feel good.

The wonder of Dick Perez's life as an artist is the way he has captured not only scenes of the game, not only the players, not only the stadiums and fields and crowds and uniforms and rhythm, but the way he has captured its timelessness.

The music of baseball grows louder as the years go on.

Consider a father, the director of this very film you're watching.

He grows up in the Northwest and his favorite baseball player, naturally, is Ken Griffey Jr.

- [scratching] -He wants only to get close to Jr.

And the best way to get close is to collect his baseball card, to study it, to dream with it.

- [crowd cheering] -Consider a son.

He too grows up in the Northwest and his favorite player, his first hero, is Julio Rodríguez.

One day, he and his father are looking through baseball cards and they're talking about their favorite players.

And they come across a Dick Perez <i>Diamond King</i> of Ken Griffey Jr.

And the father feels the same thrill he felt 30 years earlier.

And the son shouts out, "Wow!"

That moment's exactly how this movie came to be.

For that matter, there's a reason I'm your narrator.

Baseball has its hold on me too.

My son's name is Clemente.

<i>Mi héroe.</i> [light inspirational music] [Dick] <i>Basically, my run is over.</i> <i>There's no more</i> Diamond Kings.

<i>I'm not connected</i> <i>as official artist</i> <i>of the Baseball</i> <i>Hall of Fame anymore.</i> <i>It's been 20 years</i> <i>since I've been to Cooperstown.</i> <i>Doesn't matter.</i> <i>It's a different life, a different world.</i> <i>And all you can do</i> <i>is look ahead.</i> [Peggy] I remember when you painted this.

- Peggy!

- How are you?

[laughs] - Good to see you.

Good-- [mumbling] This has always been one of my favorite rooms.

- That is fantastic.

Those bats.

- [Peggy] Yes, isn't it?

I love that.

- [Dick] Yeah.

- [Peggy] I love that.

Your art used to hang the new inductees.

- [Dick] Yeah.

- [Peggy] I remember Charlie Gehringer, who was the first living Hall of Famer you painted.

And I remember showing him his card.

And he looked at it and he said, "I was never this young."

[laughs] - Johnny Mize.

- [Peggy] Oh, he loved it.

He asked for extra cards always - 'cause he wanted all of his kids to have it.

- [Dick] Yeah.

- And I think they all had them framed.

- Right.

[Peggy] Those were great times and great days.

[Dick] Well, I'm sure there's more to see.

- [Peggy] This is great.

- [Dick] There he is.

I wish I would've known him.

[Peggy] He probably would've liked to know you.

I hope I lived up to what a Puerto Rican should be.

[Peggy] I think there's no question about that, Dick.

I-- it's been a long time.

- I felt like the prodigal son, you know, coming here.

- [Peggy] Yeah.

[Bill] If you wanna know the romance of baseball, Dick Perez.

That's all you need to know.

Everything about his paintings is all about the romance of baseball.

[Bob] Dick's work brings something that I didn't see to life.

You made me feel like I was there.

You feel like you're sitting on the edge of your seat waiting to see what would happen!

[anchor] <i>If you are a baseball fan,</i> <i>this hefty book right here</i> <i>is a true treasure.</i> <i>This really is</i> <i>a history of the game.</i> - [whirring] -[Dick] <i>I thought I had done my last collection</i> <i>of baseball cards when I finished</i> <i>my stint with Topps.</i> <i>But never say never.</i> <i>I decided to call it</i> Diamond Immortals <i>because</i> Diamond Kings <i>is something that people</i> <i>know me for.</i> <i>And my book,</i> The Immortals.

<i>The theme is</i> <i>with a historic view</i> <i>of the game through the players.</i> <i>Card number one is Jim O'Rourke</i> <i>representing the 1800s.</i> <i>All the way up</i> <i>to Julio Rodríguez.</i> <i>When I look at all I've done,</i> <i>this is probably the top.</i> [instrumental "Take Me Out to the Ballgame"] [Peggy] It's fun for me to experience the Hall with you.

- It's come full circle and this is what's important.

- Yeah.

Yeah!

- That's a monumental one.

- That is.

That was the first-- - [indistinctly speaking] Yeah.

- And I-- it's signed by me, what did I say?

- [Peggy] "To the Hall of Fame."

- [Dick] Oh, "To the Hall of Fame."

Good!

I think Frank's spirit is here.

The spirit of the game is here.

When I'm here, I think of all that we did.

The royalties that we created that built this place.

- [Dick] It's a great ride.

- [Peggy] Mm-hmm.

[Dick] It was amazing!

[Peggy] Fun to relive it.

[John Thorn] What is home?

Home is paradise.

Home is the Elysian Fields of baseball.

Home is where you began.

Home is circling the bases.

Home is tying off the story, reaching an end, and perhaps reaching your maker.

Shortly after David Ortiz's mother died in a car accident in 2002, he felt sure he would never recover from it.

He was a part-time player then for the Minnesota Twins, and his career looked to be at a crossroads.

Over the next 15 seasons, he would become a Hall of Famer and a legend.

When asked where he found the strength, he simply said it was the memory of his mother.

"She wasn't like a baseball mother who knew everything about the game," he said.

[shakily] "She just wanted me to be happy."

[soft scratching] [inspirational music] [Dick] <i>My career has been</i> <i>full of paintings of heroes.</i> <i>Basically, sports figures.</i> <i>But this is a painting</i> <i>of a real hero.</i> <i>My mother.</i> [Mary] You capture her beautifully.

[music continues] Time is of the essence.

The shadow moves from the plate to the box, from the box to second base, from second base to the outfield, to the bleacher.

Time is of the essence.

The crowd and players are the same age always.

But the man in the crowd is older every season.

Come on!

Play ball!

<i>♪ The Whiz Kids had won it ♪</i> <i>♪ Bobby Thomson had done it ♪</i> <i>♪ And Yogi read the comics</i> <i>all the while ♪</i> <i>♪ Rock 'n' roll was being born ♪</i> <i>♪ Marijuana, we would scorn</i> <i>so down on the corner ♪</i> <i>♪ The national past-time</i> <i>went on trial ♪</i> <i>♪ We're talkin' baseball!

♪</i> <i>♪ Kluszewski, Campanella ♪</i> <i>♪ Talkin' baseball!

♪</i> <i>♪ The Man and Bobby Feller ♪</i> <i>♪ The Scooter, the Barber</i> <i>and the Newk ♪</i> <i>♪ They knew 'em all</i> <i>from Boston to Dubuque ♪</i> <i>♪ Especially Willie,</i> <i>Mickey, and the Duke ♪</i> ["Talkin' Baseball (Willie, Mickey And 'the Duke')" by Terry Cashman] <i>♪ Well, Casey was winning ♪</i> <i>♪ Hank Aaron was beginning ♪</i> <i>♪ One Robbie going out</i> <i>one coming in ♪</i> <i>♪ Kiner and Midget Gaedel ♪</i> <i>♪ The Thumper and Mel Parnell ♪</i> <i>♪ And Ike was the only one</i> <i>winning down in Washington ♪</i> <i>♪ I'm talkin' baseball!

♪</i> <i>♪ Kluszewski, Campanella</i> <i>talkin' baseball ♪</i> <i>♪ The Man and Bobby Feller ♪</i> <i>♪ The Scooter, the Barber</i> <i>and the Newk ♪</i> <i>♪ They knew 'em all</i> <i>from Boston to Dubuque ♪</i> <i>♪ Especially Willie,</i> <i>Mickey, and the Duke ♪</i> <i>♪ Now my old friend</i> <i>The Bachelor ♪</i> <i>♪ Well, he swore he was</i> <i>the Oklahoma Kid ♪</i> <i>♪ And Cookie played hooky ♪</i> <i>♪ To go and see the Duke ♪</i> <i>♪ And me, I always loved</i> <i>Willie Mays ♪</i> <i>♪ Those were the days!

♪</i> <i>♪ Well, now it's the 80's ♪</i> <i>♪ And Brett is the greatest ♪</i> <i>♪ And Bobby Bonds</i> <i>can play for everyone ♪</i> <i>♪ Rose is at the Vet ♪</i> <i>♪ And Rusty again is a Met ♪</i> <i>♪ And the great Alexander is</i> <i>pitchin' again in Washington ♪</i> <i>♪ I'm talkin' baseball!

♪</i> <i>♪ Like Reggie, Quisenberry ♪</i> <i>♪ Talkin' baseball!

♪</i> <i>♪ Carew and Gaylord Perry ♪</i> <i>♪ Seaver, Garvey, Schmidt</i> <i>and Vida Blue ♪</i> <i>♪ If Cooperstown is calling</i> <i>it's no fluke ♪</i> <i>♪ They'll be with Willie,</i> <i>Mickey, and the Duke ♪</i> <i>♪ Willie, Mickey, and the Duke ♪</i> <i>♪ Say hey, say hey, say hey ♪</i> <i>♪ It was Willie,</i> <i>Mickey, and the Duke ♪</i> <i>♪ Say hey, say hey, say hey ♪</i> <i>♪ I'm talkin' Willie,</i> <i>Mickey, and the Duke ♪</i> <i>♪ Say hey, say hey, say hey ♪</i> <i>♪ Willie, Mickey, and the Duke ♪</i> <i>♪ Say hey, say hey, say hey ♪</i> <i>♪ I said Willie... ♪</i> Uh, let's see.

What's this?

A fellow who says to me... ..."Please remove the above name from your mailing list.

Thank you.

Ralph Branca."

[laughs] He was the pitcher that gave up the home run to, to Bobby Thomson, yeah.

[laughs] So I took him off the list.

[echoing clack] [echoing clack] [echoing clack]