Many might not know that a ubiquitous part of baseball fandom, baseball cards, have their roots in the tobacco industry.
The earliest baseball cards were placed inside packs of cigarettes. “Cigarette companies used cards with images of baseball players to stiffen their packs of loosely packed tobacco and thin paper wrappings as early as 1888,” according to SRITA.
Players featured on the trading cards for years to come could also be seen with a bulge of chewing tobacco in their mouths, providing further advertising for tobacco.