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Rob FouchI live on Long Island but am originally from West Virginia, where there are no professional sports teams. That makes me wonder about how much the average Joe (in 1909) in a rural area like that would know or care about professional baseball. I'm assuming they'd be able to buy the various brands of tobacco with the cards contained in the packs. Would the names of the players have meant much to them? Does anyone have an idea of how widely followed baseball was at that time? Seems like the following would be pretty decent in the big cities, and maybe in Southern Leauge towns. But I don't know how someone in my hometown (pop. 2,000), for instance, would manage to keep up with baseball. Or whether they'd even have the desire to.
Any thoughts?