We are pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2026 SABR Jefferson Burdick Award is Gary Cieradkowski. In Hobby circles, Gary is best known for his Infinite Baseball Card Set, an ever-growing, independently produced collection of cards highlighting a mix of baseball outsiders, overlooked legends, and untold stories. For the readers out there, imagine if the League of Outsider Baseball never ended and took the form of baseball cards.
Just a sampling of Gary’s Infinite Baseball Card Set checklist includes Alta Weiss, Joe Schlabotnik, Pythias Russ, Andy the Clown, Dwight Eisenhower, Fran Boniar, and Jack Kerouac. And if you found yourself wondering who any of those subjects are or what they have to do with baseball, that’s kind of the point. Gary not only has your curiosity covered with the best card backs in the business but in most cases a companion booklet if not a blog post to boot.
While Gary’s cards generate instant visual appeal, as with everything Gary creates, there is far more than meets the eye. Just about nothing in the drawings is random. The colors, the uniforms, and the background details are as meticulously researched as the write-ups on the card backs, even as occasional Easter eggs might show up in some of Gary’s pieces.
In the end, however, the appeal of Gary’s work goes beyond his skills as an artist and researcher. Gary is also one of the baseball world’s great storytellers. There is a quality to his work that takes the medium of the baseball card to an entirely new realm, one that transports its holder to a bygone time and distant place where unknown heroes in unknown leagues come to life, awash in the magic of all that is beautiful about the sport.
Enjoy the honor, Gary! It’s a pleasure for SABR Baseball Cards to add your name to our list of Burdick Award winners.
Editor’s Note: To learn even more about Gary Cieradkowski, check out his fantastic interview with Dan Wallach on Episode 0504 of the My Baseball History podcast.
