This modern 12-card collection connects classic Cleveland ballplayers to several of the city’s significant baseball figures and features. The set debuted in 2026 at the summer conference of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), held in Cleveland. It builds on new research into tobacco-era cards and features some of that era’s biggest stars. All cards are modern trading card size.
Players, places, and Cleveland history
16A — Joe Jackson17B — League Park18C — Guardian—Hay Wagon
Most collectors recognize the colorful, lithographed T206 cards distributed with many tobacco brands from 1909–1911. The 1911 breakup of American Tobacco Co. narrowed future use of those images to one brand, Coupon Cigarettes, in a multiyear set now known as T213. Another tobacco brand, Fatima Cigarettes, tried marketing photographic cards starting in 1913, perhaps to see if those larger images would excite collectors and gain new customers.
Fatima Photographic Cigarette Cards
The fine detail provided by photographs sacrificed the color of lithographic cards, but used a larger size at over 4" tall. This change to sepia photos could have reflected the growing popularity of newsreels, which cinemas showed often in that era. Fatima’s set promised up to 100 cards featuring baseball players, athletes, and movie stars.
Walter Johnson — BaseballHomer Baker — Athletes (Sprinter)Crane Wilbur — Photoplay StarsCard Back — Fatima Advertisement
This SABR 54 set used T222 as design inspiration, so also continues its numbering style. Fatima printed four cards for each numbered group and ended at #15. This set continues in that spirit and groups its twelve cards as 16, 17, and 18. Letters A-D aid in organization.
Cleveland Ballplayers — Group 16
FrontBack
16A
Joe Jackson—Cleveland
Joe Jackson patrolled Cleveland's outfield from 1910 to 1915 and became one of the American League's great attractions. His batting fame and later infamy make this Cleveland portrait a striking view of a complicated base-ball life.
Image source: Cleveland State University Special Collections.
FrontBack
16B
Tris Speaker—Cleveland
Tris Speaker joined Cleveland in 1916 and brought a master's bat, glove, and baseball mind to the club. As player-manager, he helped guide Cleveland to its 1920 World Series title and secured a lasting place in the city's game.
Image source: Library of Congress, National Photo Company Collection.
FrontBack
16C
Cy Young—At Leisure
Denton True Young retired after 1911 with 511 major-league victories, a number that still towers over the record book. This walking image offers a quiet contrast to the almost unimaginable workload that made him base-ball's enduring measure of pitching. This scene was captured during a March 1912 spring-training hike in Hot Springs, Arkansas, with prominent baseball fan Michael T. “Nuf Ced” McGreevy, who became friendly with many of the era's baseball stars.
Image source: Boston Public Library / Digital Commonwealth.
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16D
Cleveland Naps Tame Cubs
Napoleon Lajoie gave Cleveland its club nickname and one of the finest right-handed bats of the dead-ball age. This unusual view with lion cubs Macon and Georgia preserves a playful moment beside a player normally remembered for serious mastery. (The local zoo at Cleveland's spring training site in Georgia named these two cubs for their city and state of birth.)
Image source: Cleveland State University Special Collections.
Players, League Park & Mascot — Group 17
FrontBack
17A
Sol White—At Rest
Bellaire native Sol White played, managed, organized, and wrote about Black base-ball with rare authority. The outstanding 1907 book Sol White’s Official Base Ball Guide remains a foundation for understanding the pre-integration game and the men who built it beyond major-league notice.
League Park stood at Lexington and East 66th as Cleveland's great base-ball address. Its odd angles, close stands, and distinctive entry tunnel hosted the Spiders, Naps, Indians, Negro League clubs, and the civic drama of generations. Learn more from the Baseball Heritage Museum, which now occupies the former ticket office shown on this card.
Image source: Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.
FrontBack
17C
Graney and Larry—Cleveland
Jack Graney bonded with Cleveland's first canine mascot, Larry the bull terrier, during his own convalescence. The pair developed an array of on-field tricks that entertained fans and players alike for years, even on the road. Author Barbara Gregorich wrote a book about this unique pair of Cleveland clubhouse teammates.
Image source: Library of Congress.
FrontBack
17D
Addie Joss—Cleveland
Addie Joss gave Cleveland a pitching legend in too brief a life. Remembered for precision, speed, and a famous perfect game, he remains one of the most poignant early stars ever attached to the city's base-ball record. Many consider the midseason exhibition held to benefit his surviving family as an early inspiration for what became baseball's annual All-Star game, given its timing and talented lineups.
Image source: Courtesy of the Western Reserve Historical Society.
Guardians of Traffic — Group 18
FrontBack
18A
Guardian of Traffic—Stagecoach
Cleveland's Hope Memorial Bridge carries travelers past the Guardians of Traffic, a parade of monumental Art Deco figures completed in 1932. Their impressive and iconic presence later inspired the name adopted by its major-league club. This stagecoach recalls expansion and farmsteading.
The covered wagon Guardian places frontier travel among Cleveland's carved history of movement. Set high above the Cuyahoga, the figure turns a bridge crossing into a lesson in transport, settlement, and the city's changing modern identity.
The hay wagon Guardian carries rural labor into Cleveland's Art Deco procession. Among the bridge figures, it recalls the farm roads, freight paths, and ordinary hauling that connected Ohio's countryside with the city's growing industrial age.
The cement truck Guardian brings the bridge's story into the age of road building, freight, and modern urban traffic. Paired with the older vehicles in the series, it makes Cleveland's monument a compact history of transportation itself.
