Launched in 2008, North Bridge Magazine is a twice-yearly publication tailored to Acton, Carlisle, Concord, Lincoln, Sudbury & Wayland residents and edited to enrich the experience of living in six of Massachusetts' most desirable communities.
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and authors like Emerson, the Alcotts, and Thoreau, baseball is as much a part of American history as the Old North Bridge. Indeed, in her 1997 memoir — Wait Till Next Year — Goodwin writes that whenever she visits the bridge and reads the Emerson poem inscribed on the obelisk there, she thinks not of "the shot heard round the world" 240 years ago, but of the one that shattered Brooklyn when she was a young girl: the homer New York Giant Bobby Thompson hit to snatch the '51 pennant from the Dodgers. While Concord has been home to such baseball luminaries as Dennis Eckersley, it hasn't produced any superstars. But that does- n't matter, says museum curator David Wood, who oversaw the selection and design of the exhibit. "Baseball is everybody's game," says Wood, noting that even Thoreau wrote of playing it as a youth. The exhibit primarily showcases baseball art, not memorabilia. "It's just a heartfelt response to the game," says Wood, "that goes a long way toward not just presenting the game, but presenting the way people think about the game." Works by big-name artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Claus Oldenburg will be on display, but the pieces now classified as folk art may draw the most attention. Some were created specifically for the game, including signage such as a 5-foot-6-inch bat emblazoned with the word "TICKETS" and the 4-foot-long "BOXOFFICE" (with a baseball serving as the middle "0"). Others items are every- day objects that incorporate baseball themes: ★ A pair of statues — one a batter, the other a pitcher — were designed to serve as andirons. ★ A batter, who appears to be swinging for the fences, tops a weath- ervane designating the four corners of the baseball diamond. ★ A pillow sham, dated 1907, depicts a comely female batter sur- rounded by a pun-filled illustrated glossary of baseball terms (under "a great catcher" is a picture a cat). One of Millie Gladstone's favorite pieces is a tortoise shell hair comb decorated with a player sliding into base. Based on her 14 ★ north bridge magazine ★ S P R I N G / S U M M E R 2 0 1 5 In her memoir Wait Till Next Year (Simon & Schuster, 1997), Doris Kearns Goodwin recounts how each evening after the Brooklyn Dodgers played, she would recreate the game for her father based on the score sheets she meticulously kept. In doing so, a historian was born. Here is an excerpt from the memoir: Through my knowledge, I commanded my father's undivided attention, the sign of his love. It would instill in me an early awareness of the power of narrative, which would introduce a lifetime of storytelling, fueled by the naive confidence that others would find me as entertaining as my father did . E R I C L E V I N Doris Kearns Goodwin