American baseball in an 18th century portrait?

[Joel S. Berson]

The following article, by Doug Tribou and "originally aired on WBUR's
[Boston] 'Only a Game' [isn't that from NPR?]", is about a portrait,
painted allegedly more than 200 years ago, of two boys, one light-
and the other dark-skinned, both holding "bats" and one holding a
ball.  The painting (shown in the article) is allegedly American.
http://www.wbur.org/2010/10/23/baseball-painting

An advertisement in the art magazine "Apollo" gave the title as
"Double-Portrait of two Boys with Baseball Bats".

Tribou's research is interesting, but ends up "it's another dead end"
-- no proof that the "game" is baseball.

Joel

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