# Jim Berryman's 1936 baseball preview, lost among the experts Lost! - in a forest of confusing dope! is a Jim Berryman cartoon for the Washington Evening Star, dated 8 April 1936. Two puzzled men wander among tree trunks labelled with American League strengths and doubts, and a caption says the game is played on a field, not on paper (NAID 5743105). - Home - Archive - Jim Berryman's 1936 baseball preview, lost among the experts Lost! - in a forest of confusing dope! Jim Berryman's 1936 baseball preview, lost among the experts Jim Berryman's 8 April 1936 Evening Star cartoon sets two puzzled men among trees labelled with American League forecasts. NAID 5743105, Senate records. ## Techniques named on the archive record Card stacking DateApril 8, 1936Made byWashington Evening Star (cartoonist Jim Berryman)MediumCartoonCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 5730852; NAID 5743105SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives (NARA), Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons (NAID 5730852) , retrieved October 3, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) Jim Berryman, Washington Evening Star. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the U.S. Senate, 5743105 (NAID 5743105). Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records. Full record at propagandaarchive.org Lost! - in a forest of confusing dope! is a Jim Berryman cartoon for the Washington Evening Star, dated 8 April 1936. Two puzzled men wander among tree trunks labelled with American League strengths and doubts, and a caption says the game is played on a field, not on paper (NAID 5743105). ## The drawing This is a baseball cartoon, not a political one. The archive describes two bewildered men standing among tree trunks, each trunk lettered with a team's supposed edge or weakness, and small inset sketches of a team owner, a horse, and a player riding a tiger. The labels are the joke. Every forecast points a different way. LOST! - IN A FOREST OF CONFUSING DOPE !......... YANKS' PITCHING STAFF / SENATORS' SPEED / DI MAGGIO THREAT / HOW ABOUT GROVE ? / YAWKEY'S "ALL-STARS" / INDIANS UNKNOWN [...] AMERICAN LEAGUE "EXPERTS" THEY'VE GOT IT ON PAPER--BUT THE GAME IS PLAYED ON A FIELD! [...] BUT THE DARK HORSE MIGHT BE AN INDIAN PONY! JIM BERRYMAN Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image and not independently checked; line breaks joined with slashes and cuts marked. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 5743105. ## Why it is in the file The archive tags the cartoon with card stacking and calls the fit weak: each tree carries one selective claim, and the claims are set against each other. Its catalog lines put the issuer type as media, the audience as the domestic public, and the purpose as warning or informing. There is no government message here and no enemy. The useful thing about the cartoon is its attitude. The line about paper and the field is a cartoonist laughing at the "experts" and their confident predictions. ## The Berryman set The drawing sits in the National Archives among the Jim Berryman political cartoons held with the records of the U.S. Senate. On this site, the July 1938 cartoon of WPA money sown across the South and the same month's New Deal knight charging three Democrats show the political side. The Roosevelt administration essay notes that the country's newspapers in these years were privately owned. How the cartoon came into the Senate files is not in the FRAME record. ## Sources - FRAME object record, Lost! - in a forest of confusing dope!, 8 April 1936. Washington Evening Star (cartoonist Jim Berryman). Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work). - U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons (NAID 5730852), item NAID 5743105, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026. Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/berryman-lost-in-a-forest-of-confusing-dope-1936/