Baseball diamonds and world's fair wonders.

• Position: Innovations

There are a myriad of objects on display at "Centuries of Progress: American World's Fairs," ranging from photographs to models to archival materials to ephemera--including the "World of Tomorrow" World's Fair patch worn by the hometown New York Giants, Brooklyn Dodgers, and New York Yankees. Interestingly, the trio of Gotham clubs displayed the Trylon-Perisphere-Helicline logo during the 1938 season--even though that world's fair was held in 1939-40--apparently to make way the following year for the baseball centennial patch that all major league teams would wear, commemorating the 100th anniversary of when Abner Doubleday supposedly invented our national pastime.

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The 1964 New York World's Fair also had an impact on Big Apple baseball. The fledgling New York Metropolitan Baseball Club (better known as the Mets) moved out of the Polo Grounds (former home to both the Giants and Yankees) and into brand-new Shea Stadium, which was built adjacent to the Fair's grounds at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens. One pundit even dubbed the new ballpark "Shea-O-Rama," poking fun at the pavilions and exhibits with designations that inevitably seemed to end in "O-Rama" The Amazin's--a nickname the team would pick up five years hence for winning the World Series--wore the Unisphere patch for the...