Hip-hop and baseball have blended well in the past -- remember when 50 Cent's infamously terrible first pitch received its own commemorative baseball card? -- but never as good as this.
Two artist-slash-writers named Cori Johnson and Zac Milner had the genius idea to combine two of America's greatest pastimes -- rap and baseball -- into a single throwback card. The result is a Tumblr called Straight Outta Cooperstown, where you can find a collection of throwback baseball cards featuring rap legends like Biggie Smalls and Tupac.
Just as the Tumblr's name plays on NWA's album "Straight Outta Compton" and Cooperstown, New York, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame, the individual cards also cleverly combine hip-hop monikers with actual baseball names. The result are gems like "Lou Brock Shakur," Joe Torreous B.I.G." and "Slick Rickey Henderson."
There's even more fun on Straight Outta Cooperstown's Tumblr page, where baseball-related lyrics written by the interpolated rapper appear below their individual card.
"Jay Z Stengel's" hard baseball bars from his song "Brooklyn We Go Hard" were featured with his card: "I father, I Brooklyn Dodger them/I jack, I rob, I sin/Aww man, I'm Jackie Robinson."
These cards give new meaning to the simply stated and unequivocally true Rick Ross line, "rappers wanna be ballers, ballers wanna be rappers."
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