Moving Pictures of Our National Pastime—The Baseman

This Sunday comic strip by Clare Briggs depicts baseball action through twelve sequential panels, each labeled with a specific play: base hit, holding first, leading off, caught napping, stealing second, the slide, and others culminating in a score. The strip demonstrates the visual vocabulary emerging in early newspaper comics—panel borders, action lines, and expressive figure drawing—that would become foundational to comic art. Briggs's energetic linework captures athletic motion and slapstick timing, transforming sports into visual narrative. Published during baseball's peak cultural moment, the strip entertained readers while establishing how sequential art could chronicle rapid, dynamic events with humor and clarity.