Rockwell, Red Sox a winning pair

As baseball season heats up, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is paying tribute to a pair of New England icons: Norman Rockwell and the Boston Red Sox.

After the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, the museum wanted to honor the team’s achievement and appeal to a broad range of visitors, said Karen Quinn, the show’s curator.

The focus of “Rockwell and the Red Sox” is the painter’s 1957 work “The Rookie,” which shows Red Sox players Ted Williams, Sammy White, Frank Sullivan, Jackie Jensen and Bill Goodman in the locker room at spring training, with an awkward-looking new prospect in street clothes with a glove, bat and suitcase. The work appeared on the cover of the March 2, 1957, edition of The Saturday Evening Post, which is also on view.

Other items include Williams’ locker from Fenway Park, cleats that pitcher Curt Schilling wore in the 2004 World Series, a program from the 1912 World Series won by the Red Sox, and the 1919 promissory note from the New York Yankees that was part of the payment for Babe Ruth, the deal that fans blamed for an eight-decade curse on the Red Sox.