Quick Preview: If you’re wondering what baseball has to do with Tarot—or vice versa—these EP stories will put you on third.
Welcome everyone! I almost never send out an EP post on Saturday—or early on any day. But today’s exception is brought to you courtesy of Major League Baseball.
Briefly: Every evening when I planned to sit down and finish/send this post, I’ve ended up too focused on watching baseball to write about it. So this morning, I decided to get ahead of the count.
If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, the mention of baseball won’t be a surprise. But now that we are in the thick of post-season play, some folks might want a convenient refresher—and newcomers might appreciate an introduction.
In several years of EP posts, I’ve highlighted decks with all sorts of themes, from cats (of course) to movies to mushrooms to fairy tales to—well, there have been quite a few. Including several inspired by the much-loved game of baseball.
So here’s a reprise of relevant EP posts, beginning with the origin story . . .
Batter Up!
After many years of ignoring baseball, I suddenly returned to fandom this year—and like riding a bicycle it all comes back to you! The same thing is true of reading Tarot, when you’ve done it enough. So even if you’re away from that space for a long time, whenever you enter it again, the skills you developed in the past will take over.
Naturally I looked for a Tarot/baseball connection, and was intrigued to discover that Topps--venerable manufacturer of bubble gum and trading cards—has been publishing a baseball line called “Gypsy Queen.” Early on, in 2018, the cards were actually what we might call Tarot-adjacent. For example:
After that year, it seems the Gypsy Queen line gravitated back toward the ordinary, and by now it’s distinguished only by a different style of background. But what I like about this is the parallel between collecting baseball cards and laying out Tarot cards.
You just never know what you’ll get.
Line Drive!
In Part 4.1, I introduced Arthur Corwin and his ideas. If you haven’t read it yet, I hope you’ll start there.
But if you can’t wait to get to the baseball part (and I know a couple of readers who fall into that category)—here’s a really quick recap.
Arthur Corwin was a fine artist and sculptor, a licensed civil engineer, a distinguished architect, and a legendary professor at the Cooper Union School of Art, from 1966 until 2000. His explorations of prehistory, symbolism, and archetypes led him to a deep interest in Tarot, which he saw as a survival of an ancient calendar system.
And now . . .
Jim Markowich and Paul Kuhrman met at The Cooper Union School of Art in 1975. As explained on their website:
While there, we were both introduced to Arthur Corwin's fascinating and compelling theories of prehistoric time-keeping. Corwin taught sculpture, but it was his "Math in Art" course that was especially engaging, and through it we got to be familiar with the tarot in some depth.
The two roommates also shared an interest in tango (long story) and baseball. They don’t seem to have considered a tango Tarot, nor did anyone else until a very recent Kickstarter project: Tarot del Tango.
But in 1983, they came up with the idea of a baseball Tarot. When I wrote that date, I was amazed to realize this story began forty years ago! And we’ll see in a moment what happened to their project over four decades.
First, however, we need to focus on just how much effort they put into it. Jim writes:
We did small drawings. I worked them up larger, then stretched 78 canvases, each one 14" x 26". I mixed and applied a gesso that made the canvases look weathered, made eight different colored batches of acrylic paints and drew outlines on the canvases in dark brown Prismacolor. Since I was minimally employed that year, I spent a good part of the rest of 1983 painting the Tarot de Cooperstown.
The paintings spent a long time stored in crates before . . .
In 1999, a gallery in Seattle hung them all in an exhibit celebrating the then-new major league ballpark, Safeco field.
As you can see, the collaborators (who call themselves G&B Tango) chose baseball-themed suit tokens: Bats, Balls, Gloves, and Bases. The pips aren’t illustrated, but the court cards feature characters associated with specific aspects and events of the game. For example:
If you know a little about baseball, you’ll see that the game event associated with each queen fits the suit. For example—the Queen of Gloves represents a particular type of catch, the Queen of Bats a particular type of swing.
That’s important, because the deck is designed not only (or even primarily) for traditional divinatory purposes, but also to play a baseball card game. More about that in a moment.
But first, the rest of the origin story. Jim and Paul named the deck Tarot de Cooperstown in honor of (a) the Tarot de Marseilles and (b) the National Baseball Hall of Fame, which is located in Cooperstown, New York—the birthplace of Abner Doubleday, who (accurately or not) has long been thought of as the “inventor” of the game.
Other than the Seattle exhibition, the paintings remained in storage for many years, until the costs of producing a Tarot deck diminished from gazillions to not-that-much. In 2014, the Tarot of Cooperstown began to be transformed from an idea to a reality.
And here’s my favorite part of the whole story, as told by Jim:
Actually, the only time [the paintings] came out recently was the day I photographed them for making these decks. While I was there with the photoflood lamps and the camera on the tripod, the phone rang. It was Art Corwin—the first call I'd gotten from him in many years. Cue the eerie music.
Let’s close with a look at the Major Arcana:
Notice how these trumps combine the most iconic features of traditional Marseilles imagery with equally iconic depictions drawn from the world of baseball. And it’s all done with a touch of wry humor!
Among my personal favorites:
Here’s a detailed guide to the Tarot de Cooperstown game. And here’s a teaser:
More proof that if you introduce creative people to the concepts of Tarot—anything can happen . . .
Bases Loaded!
In a follow-up to those posts, I recommended this 2001 article from Baseball Ink, comparing the Tarot de Cooperstown with two other baseball-themed decks:
Here’s an excerpt from that article, followed by some pictures of the other decks it discusses:
And now that I've begun the baseball analogies, I want to praise the Tarot of Baseball, the Baseball Tarot, and the Tarot de Cooperstown for being great comparative studies of two very complex concepts. The Tarot and baseball can be linked, and linked so well that there is room for all three [of these] interpretations.
I'll begin with the names of the four suits:
All three decks use Bats for Wands—the fire suit symbolizing creative experiences. The Wand is a lightning rod that absorbs power from without and uses it to spark power from within. The bat is the instrument by which a hitter can channel the energy of a pitched ball into an expression of his or her own inner individual force.
All the decks use a Glove, or Mitt, for Cups. This is fitting, as the water suit symbolizes emotional experiences like receptivity, flexibility and relating. The catcher is clearly in a receptive relationship with the pitcher. The fielders, too, are in a position of receiving and cooperation. It is the give-and-take interplay of gloves that creates a team.
For Swords, the suit of mental experiences, the decks disagree. Balls do seem better than Bases for representing the element of air, and a lot strategy lies in how the ball is pitched, hit or fielded. But this suit is about maneuvering for an advantage. Runners try to win the bases, and fielders try to defend them. This is baseball's true match of wits and agility.
The decks also disagree on Disks. This is the suit of earth experiences, and so Bases are the natural symbol. Balls work well visually, as they are disk-shaped in two-dimensional drawings. But the most interesting icon to me is Caps. Baseball caps sport the team logo and franchise name--those things that give a ball player worldly sustenance and identity.
So here’s a look at Baseball Tarot:
And here’s a sample from the (very different) Tarot of Baseball:
This is a really great play-off season—so if you’re already a baseball fan, hope you’re enjoying it. And if not—it’s never too late!
Meantime, my other favorite sport (yes, figure skating IS a sport) kicks off this weekend, so I’m a busy spectator. But there are new Tarot stories clamoring to be told, along with promises to keep. So . . .
Dear C., thank you... Let's Go Mets!, Ed