The Baseball Reliquary is paying tribute to the baseball trading card, during the month of June in South Pasadena, California. Entitled “Son of Cardboard Fetish,” the exhibit opens on Wednesday, June 2 and runs through June 30 at the South Pasadena Public Library.
A companion and update to last year’s popular “Cardboard Fetish” exhibition at the Pasadena Central Library, “Son of Cardboard Fetish” mixes nostalgia, affection, irreverence, and social commentary in its celebration of baseball trading cards.
A highlight of the display is a selection of artworks and artist-designed baseball cards by Chester Crill, Greg Jezewski, Jon and Steve Leonoudakis, Richard Newton, and William Scaff. The exhibit marks the first time the Leonoudakis Brothers have shared their collection of baseball card curiosities.
Jon is unveiling his “Villains” baseball cards, an homage to the 1964 Topps set, featuring a group of the greatest villains in cinema history from Ernst Stavro Blofeld to Joan Crawford (“Mommie Dearest”) to Norman Bates, all depicted in the uniforms of Jon’s two most hated teams, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees. 
Brother Steve has gathered together distinctive groupings of baseball players on cardboard, ranging from guys with greasy hair and crew cuts to guys with double chins and giant wads of tobacco, the latter collection affectionately entitled “Men with Lumps on Their Faces.” There’s even a special group of players who share the Leonoudakis ancestry, entitled “Baseball’s Greatest — and only — Greeks.”
The Baseball Reliquary is a Pasadena-based nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering an appreciation of American art and culture through the context of baseball history and to exploring the national pastime’s “unparalleled creative possibilities”.
