Instead of Dürer, she has Mordecai (Three Finger) Brown, the Chicago Cubs pitcher whose damaged right hand — he lost most of his right index finger in a farming accident — allowed him to throw a ball that dipped like a shot bird. And John McGraw, the New York Giants manager, whom you might call hypercompetitive, superstitious, even obsessed, but don’t you dare call him Muggsy to his face.

And Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Frank Chance, who made up three-quarters of the Chicago Cubs infield immortalized by some baseball verse written in 1910. Its author, Franklin Pierce Adams, did not rhyme the fact that Tinker and Evers loathed each other, or that Chance was a fierce but sometimes unsportsmanlike competitor who was not above launching a bottle at fans who bothered him.

And while it may not be a masterpiece from the Northern Renaissance, Ms. Spira also has a rare T206 Honus Wagner card, the size of a matchbox and valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. Its worth derives partly from the supposed back story: that Wagner, a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates and perhaps the greatest all-around player in history, blocked continued production of the card because he did not want to help promote cigarettes to children.

Beyond that, the card is striking for the rugged nobility conveyed in the face of its subject. He was the awkward son of hardscrabble immigrants, big-chested, bowlegged and with shovel-like hands that threw rocks and dirt to first base along with the ball. But he was baseball royalty, and his expression on this card says he knew it.

The museum does not provide the intriguing back stories of the men depicted in these cards. For that you may need the indispensable Web site baseball-reference.com, or, better yet, the classic oral history “The Glory of Their Times,” by Lawrence S. Ritter, probably the best baseball book ever written. So do some research first, perhaps, and then go to the museum to slip into another baseball era, free of steroids but not of human complication.

Here is Christy Mathewson, the cerebral pitching star for the New York Giants who preferred chess to carousing; he conveys a boyish assurance of his charms. Here is Wild Bill Donovan, a curveball pitcher for the Detroit Tigers whose nickname referred to both control and lifestyle; his look all but dares you to ask him about Cobb. Here is Laughing Larry Doyle, a second baseman with power; his smile underscores what he is said to have once crowed: “It’s great to be young and a New York Giant.”