In honor of 125 consecutive years of professional baseball in Indianapolis, the National Art Museum of Sport (NAMOS) is exhibiting over 45 works of baseball art from its permanent collection.

The exhibit is on view at the home of NAMOS, University Place on the campus of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, throughout the Indianapolis Indians 2011 season. Professional baseball has been played in Indianapolis each year since 1887 and the Indians are considered Indianapolis’ first professional sports team.

Defending the Green Monster,    Ray Ellis

Mullins most famous character, the Brooklyn Dodger Bum, was born in 1937 as a taxi driver took Mullin back to the office after a Dodger baseball game at Ebbets Field. The driver asked: “How’d our bums do today?” The resulting cartoon, “Goodbye Now,” is in the NAMOS exhibit.

The 30 original Mullin cartoons in the Museum’s collection were given to NAMOS by his daughter, Shirley Mullin Rhodes of Sun City, Ariz., and the late David Camerer, who was a sports writer colleague of Mullin. Mullin’s granddaughter, Nancy Rhodes, is a faculty member at IUPUI.

Other highlights of the NAMOS baseball exhibit include:

• Six sculptures of members of the former Negro Baseball Leagues created when they were old men by Hoosier-born Dan Edwards.
• “Cobb Slide” by Massachusetts artist Ray Ellis, who painted the Ty Cobb on camera for NAMOS’ video, “The Art of Sport.”
• “Dem Bums Abroad” by John Groth, a watercolor depicting the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers at spring training in Havana.

The National Art Museum of Sport, founded in 1959, is one of the nation's largest collections of art depicting sport. Located in University Place Conference Center, 850 W. Michigan St., Indianapolis, it is open to the public free of charge from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and some weekends. For more information call, 317.274.3627, or visit www.namos.iupui.edu.