Baseball
Heroes

Four Years, Four Legends — The Complete Baseball Heroes Roster

The Hallmark Baseball Heroes series launched in 1994 — the same year Major League Baseball experienced its longest work stoppage, a players' strike that cancelled the World Series for the first time since 1904. Against that backdrop, Hallmark's first Baseball Heroes ornament honored the player who became the symbol of what baseball could be at its most mythic: Babe Ruth, New York Yankees, 714 career home runs, 60 in a single season in 1927. Artist Dill Rhodus. 3 inches in diameter. Career highlights embossed on the back. A short biography on the back of the box. "Americans love Baseball," The Ornament Shop observed, "and we have a fascination with the players and some of their legendary accomplishments."

The series made four specific choices across its four years, and each choice was deliberate. Babe Ruth in 1994: the most recognizable name in baseball history, the first choice for any series about baseball legends. Lou Gehrig in 1995: Ruth's Yankee teammate and counterpart, the Iron Horse who played 2,130 consecutive games, whose farewell speech at Yankee Stadium in 1939 — "Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth" — is one of the most remembered utterances in American sports history. Satchel Paige in 1996: the Negro Leagues legend who pitched for over two decades in the Negro Leagues before breaking into Major League Baseball at age 42 — the oldest rookie in MLB history — and who was enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971. His inclusion in the series is the choice that most distinguishes the Baseball Heroes roster from a simple poll of famous baseball names. And Jackie Robinson in 1997: the Brooklyn Dodger who broke Major League Baseball's color barrier on April 15, 1947, whose uniform number 42 was retired by every Major League team in 1997 — the 50th anniversary year of his debut, the same year Hallmark honored him with the series' fourth and final entry.

Tips for the Collection

• 01
  Display all four as a complete roster — the series was assembled across four years with a specific logic. The four players were not chosen randomly: Ruth and Gehrig are the Yankees dynasty, the two most famous figures of 1920s-1930s baseball. Satchel Paige represents the Negro Leagues and the players who were excluded from MLB for decades. Jackie Robinson represents the moment of integration. Together the four ornaments tell a coherent story of American baseball history — not just the greatest players, but the arc of who was allowed to play and when.
• 02
  The 1997 Jackie Robinson entry was released in his 50th anniversary year — the same year MLB retired #42 universally. On April 15, 1997 — the 50th anniversary of Robinson's MLB debut — Commissioner Bud Selig announced that Jackie Robinson's number 42 would be retired by every Major League team. Hallmark released the Jackie Robinson Baseball Heroes ornament the same year. The ornament is a time-specific tribute: the year baseball acknowledged Robinson's legacy with the most sweeping honor in the sport's history.
• 03
  Turn each ornament over — the career highlights are embossed on the back. The Baseball Heroes ornaments carry their statistical records on their reverse surface — embossed, permanent, part of the ornament itself rather than printed on paper. Ruth's 714 home runs. Gehrig's 2,130 consecutive games. Paige's career. Robinson's milestones. The back of each ornament is as much the collectible as the front.
• 04
  All 4 Baseball Heroes Hallmark ornaments — the complete series #1 through #4 · 1994–1997 — are at Already Christmas. Ruth, Gehrig, Paige, Robinson. The complete roster. The greatest four-player lineup in the Keepsake catalog.