Happy birthday, Abe Lincoln; here’s a baseball political cartoon – CBSSports.com

Friday, Feb. 12, occasions President Abraham Lincoln’s 207th birthday, so in the interest of SEO Hot Sauce let us contrive a baseball hook. Look, here’s one …

(Image: About.com)

That’s a political cartoon tied to the 1860 presidential election, which Lincoln of course won. From left to right you’ve got renderings of John Bell, Stephen A. Douglas, John C. Breckinridge, and Lincoln himself. There’s also a 19th-century cat-rat. Or a chinchilla-squirrel. One or the other.

Anyhow, all four cartoon candidates are, as you can see, holding bats, and Lincoln is brandishing the baseball itself. Lincoln above says, “Gentlemen, if any of you should ever take a hand in another match at this game, remember that you must have ‘a good bat’ and strike a ‘fair ball’ and make a ‘clean score’ of a ‘home run’.”

Sick burn! Lethal levels of air quotes!

Lincoln has often been linked to baseball in one form or another, often in laughably apocryphal fashion, but some credible accounts suggest he was aware of and even took an interest in the fledgling sport, particularly after he became president.

So happy birthday to you, prez. Clicketty, click, click, click!