Baseball can trace its roots to about 1843. Baseball cards arrived a few seasons later, initially as package inserts and mail-away offers designed to boost tobacco sales. Later, as candy and gum companies got increasingly involved, the cardboard sales premiums, took on a life of their own.

Some kids chewed the bubblegum, but everyone swallowed the illusion. Never mind reality.

If you couldn't play the game, you wished you could. And you marveled at those who did. You carried your favorite players to school in your back pocket, and clothespinned your doubles to the spokes of your bike. The rumble of your wheels said it all.

One early tobacco company to take advantage of America's baseball passion was Liggett & Myers. In 1912, the New York outfit placed these small team photos in their Fatima tobacco package and promised to send an enlarged picture (13 x 21) of the team of your choice in exchange for forty Fatima Turkish Blend Cigarette coupons.

If you look close, you'll find Casey Stengel on the Brooklyn squad and Walter Johnson on the Washington team. Another fellow playing in the same congressional district that year, Chic Gandil, would make headlines about seven years later as one of the key players involved in the Black Sox scandal.

The American Card Catalogue designates all old tobacco card sets with a T and a number. The 1912 Fatima team cards are known as T200's, while this card of John McGraw, "The Little Napoleon", is from the 1912 T207 set.