For sale: Baseball's golden era.
Or at least images of the game's nascent rise as the archive of famed photographer Charles M. Conlon, who snapped to life the national pastime, is up for auction this week (via The New York Times).
The some 7,500 negatives — many of them glass — in the Heritage Auctions sale date to the early 20th century and include iconic images of the game's earliest superstars: an action shot of Ty Cobb sliding into third base in a cloud of dirt, a tight facial portrait of Babe Ruth, a shot of New York Giants pitcher Christy Mathewson, said to be Conlon’s first portrait.