Butch - Thanks - I am nearly certain that you are right and these were not issued affixed to any type of backing. The fact that all of the ones I have now seen (thanks to the posts on these Forums) and the ones we own all appear to be hand cut (rather than die cut) seems to point to them having been issued in either sheets or "Paper Boll" books - likely as Paper Dolls of some type for boys. I assume you have checked all of the McLoughlin catalogs that the American Antiquarian Society has on line so I won't duplicate this research but I do have another thought. We have handled hundreds (if not thousands) of McLoughlin Brothers Chromolithograph Children's Books, Paper Dolls, Paper Toys, Card Games, Board Games, etc. (of all types not just sports related) over the past 33+ years and the quality of the color lithography seen on these baseball "Paper Dolls" is nowhere even close to the craftsmanship that McLoughlin produced in the 1880's and 1890's. These Baseball Paper Figures feature a simple 3 or maybe 4 color printing process while McLoughlin products of this period were much more complex - printed with 6, 8, sometimes 10 or 12 stones. I think there might be a very good possibility that these Baseball Paper Figures we published by someone other than McLoughlin - the quality of the lithography is just not up to what McLoughlin Bros. were doing at the time. Just my opinion but perhaps another avenue of research.
Tom
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