Sports Art(?) Perez-Steele Brooks Robinson Hall of Fame Postcard

Note: I wrote this entry on Tuesday, June 19. On Wednesday LeRoy Neiman, who I discuss here, passed away. R.I.P

I think of three names where sports 'art' is concerned. LeRoy Neiman, Sam Bass, known for his NASCAR 'art' and Dick Perez whose is best known to baseball fans for his Hall of Fame portraits, seen on a nice set of collectible postcards. 

Neiman is the most universally known of the three and he was a big deal back in the day. I'm no art critic but of the three I appreciate Neiman the most. His stuff was everywhere. He was on Wheaties boxes on store shelves and in Sports Illustrated. He'd go to a big game or a big heavyweight bout and he'd have a painting done the next day commemorating it. 

I had a Muhammad Ali print he did up on the wall of my first apartment. I read somewhere that he's 1) a semi-impressionist and 2) hated by most serious art folks. Doesn't matter, I like his sports art.

Sam Bass, on the other hand, I just don't get at all. NASCAR-types (and I follow it and a lot of motorsports) just go gaga over this guys work. Hell, he's the "Officially Licensed Artist of NASCAR". Yeah, whatever. He's like the emperor with no clothes. Everyone knows he sucks but nobody says it out loud. To me it looks like something done for a high school art contest. Every year the district I work for has a Rodeo Art show and winners have their work displayed at the huge Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. The also-rans in our local contest display more talent than Sam Bass. 

Your Honor, I rest my case.

And finally we have Dick Perez of the 'hobby famous' Perez-Steele Galleries. I'm generally a fan of his stuff. I really like a lot of the portraits he did for the Hall of Fame postcards. The Brooks Robinson one I'm showing at the top is a good example. His Ty Cobb and Chief Bender are really great as well.

The Hall of Fame cards were issued each year after the initial years sets that covered the inductees up to that time. I'm not sure they are still put out. From what I saw on this page it doesn't appear so. Looks like the 2001 inductees were the last ones that were issued. I've got a dozen or so. I may post them when I dig them out.

He also did a lot of work for Topps and Donruss. Not all of it, IMHO, up to the standards of his other art. But I do like his Allen & Ginter art. Nice stuff. 

Dick Perez has got a nice website. I didn't know he did some special Phiiles commissioned art. There is a lot of stuff to look at there.

Artsy Fartsy Billy P

With only two items* on my Billy Pierce 'wish list', and both of them being costly/hard-to-find, I haven't really done much to bolster my Pierce collection lately.

I added a couple of 'art cards' which fall into the 'I'll add them if they are reasonable' category. They weren't 'must-haves' but they are attractive pieces that I was happy to pick up.

Almost all my Batman art cards are original sketches. I rarely give a second glance to prints, no matter how limited. When it comes to sports art cards I'm not as fussy. I really like Edward Vela's style. He's done a handful of Pierce cards previously. I have bought and posted two others. This one is the best of the bunch. It's based on a photo that I've seen used multiple times on cards.

That card back is signed which is unique among the Vela Pierce cards I own. The fact that it has "#4" after Pierce's name means there is one more I might eventually track down. I bought a stack of his cards a few months ago and still haven't scanned them. I'll get to that soon enough.

The other addition is a Gypsy Oak 'faux' vintage postcard. I believe it's a woodcut and it's done on old cardboard. This came from a third party seller on eBay. I purchased a few items from the artist directly some years back and I see some of his work on Twitter. Earlier today I tried to locate his home page by looking at his Twitter profile and found that he has blocked me. 👀😏😄 This could be due to the fact that I declined his offer to sell me a large Pierce commissioned piece. (too costly and I couldn't display it anyway) or, and this is more likely, due to my left-leaning, socialist (LOL) Twitter posts and re-tweets. Sigh.

Nonetheless, it's a nice piece and it'll go into the Pierce binder postcard pages. I hold no grudges. Besides, I think I blocked him first. ᕦ(ツ)ᕤ

LATE ADDITION:

Today's afternoon mail brought something that fits this post perfectly. A postal cachet featuring BP with the Giants canceled in NYC in 1985. I don't think the date has any significance at all. One reason I liked it is the fact that it mentions his duels with Whitey Ford. I saw a couple of those at Yankee Stadium with my father.

But it's another oddball Pierce item. 

*= they are the '59 Bazooka Short Print and the 1959 Topps Venezuelan Ace Hurlers #156 with Robin Roberts

The Art of Gary Cieradkowski

I've brought up sports art a few times in the past. There is a lot of great stuff out there, and some (IMHO) not-so-great as well. One of my favorite sports artists is Gary Cieradkowski. I've referred to him before and one of his cards made my 30 Day Baseball Challenge on Twitter.

He is a card blogger (he draws his own of course) and has authored/illustrated a great book. He recently made available his latest project, the Spring 2017 edition of 21: Illustrated Journal of Outsider Baseball. I received my copy a week or two ago and am enjoying it very much. I scanned the cover....

...but I wasn't about to subject it to breaking the spine in my scanner so I took some photos of the inside pages to post here. Not as satisfying as a scan but they will give you an idea of how nice it really is. You can click to enlarge. Enjoy:

This Steve Bilko article is my favorite. Such a neat story. Great portrait as well.

I hope you get the idea from these pics.

And along with my copy came a card of a young, Baltimore Oriole-era Babe Ruth. That's it up top. The reverse is scan worthy.

Outside of commenting on major brand card releases as we all do I don't often write a post 'promoting' anything. But I've enjoyed Cieradowski's work so much I felt the need to put this up for everyone's enjoyment.

Great stuff!!

Sports Art II Andy Jurinko

I try to base my posts on items in my collection, even if they lead me far afield. This isn't about anything I own. A blurb in the digital edition of the current Sports Illustrated led me to discover Andy Jurinko who passed away early last year. 

I have some vague awareness of his work. I'm sure I'd seen some of it someplace but I don't recall where or how. But I sure didn't recognize the name. And look what I've been missing. These are some wonderful portraits and paintings that capture both players and moments from the 'Glory Days' of baseball. Lots of excellent renderings of classic ballparks as well. 

A coffee-table sized book of his portraits has been published recently. That's it at the top of the post. Check out some of his work. Many more in the gallery on andyjurinko.com.  Well worth checking out. And his obit in the NY Times has a lot of background on Jurinko. 

This one of Frank Robinson in action is among my favorites. 

He's really captured Stan Musial's persona in this one, don't you think?

Hank Greenberg...

And Wrigley Field where my lucky dog son Brooks is today with his girlfriend watching the Cubs and Astros.

He had a previous book, 'Heart of the Game', published that featured the American League and it's vintage parks, action and players. The Times obit linked above says his 'Glory Boys' volume was to be a National League version. That might have changed with his passing.

Billy Pierce Print card

This is the second Billy Pierce card done by Edward Vela that I've picked up. The first was an 'unlimited' print card with BP in a portrait pose. As I mentioned in that post I really like this guy's work.

I've always felt good 'sports art' is hard to come by and when I find someone whose work is enjoyable I'll pick up things I can afford. Vela does all sorts of stuff and releases all kinds of cards but his baseball work is what I like the most.

This one was numbered to 9 as are most of what he puts on eBay. It cost $8 with free postage which is 2 bucks more than I paid for my 'jumbo' Archives packs which yielded me nothing much to speak of.

One Bat, Two Bat, Red Bat, Blue Bat!

So who sez I don't post-baseball stuff? Check this out:

Yup, Robin has a nasty high, hard inside fastball. That's card #27A of the 1966 Topps Batman Puzzle-back series, aka, the 'red bat' set. I posted about my black bat set some time ago. Topps was all over the Batman mania that prevailed in the mid-1960s, in 1966 specifically. They released five Batman sets that year, six if you count the two different styles of 'blue bat' set card backs. More on that in a bit.

Batman collectors tend to migrate to the black bat set as the best of the cartoon-style bunch. I can't disagree. It has the sharpest artwork and the backs are really nice. But Topps piled on with these two similar sets. I recently completed them both. 

Before moving on I must address the condition of these. Like all the vintage non-sports sets I have, I am perfectly happy to pick them up in less than pristine condition. It would be neat to have gem mint Batman sets but that's not a priority with me. What I have come to learn as being 'collector grade' is just fine. Cards in one piece, creases not too obvious, decent corners, minimal extraneous marks....I'm good to go. 

Both the red and blue sets are made up of 44 cards. They also both come with backs that form puzzles of various characters involved in Batman's world. Both sets are also primarily made up of horizontal cards with a mix of vertical ones.  

Here's the back of the card up top:

If you can read the small print on that card back you can see that the puzzle was formed with six cards. The villains were all six-piece puzzles while out heroes got bigger, 10 piece puzzles.

Here are a few more of my favorite cards from the set. Hard to beat mixing in the Statue of Liberty!
 

I guess Gotham City has a 'Broadway', too.

Why would a ghost wear glasses, other than to better visualize him in a cartoon?

And a shapely damsel in distress.

And here is a look at the Joker puzzle when it's put together:

The blue bat set was the third of these cartoon art sets of 1966. It's also the weakest in terms of artwork. But no Batman art is bad Batman art. It was numbered as 1B thru 44B. 

Again with the puzzle backs.

Robin gets to work his arm again in this set.

Here is the variation mentioned above. This blue bat series was also issued with these backs:

They are called the blue cowl backs and I much prefer them to the puzzles. I picked up a couple of these cowl backs on COMC just as 'type cards' and I'm fighting the urge to chase the whole thing.

The two different back from the #9B card, side-by-side:

I mentioned that Topps had six Batman issues in 1966. Here are cards (not mine) from the other two. These used photos from the TV show and the movie. The Batman Laffs set had TV pics...

The Batman/Riddler set was based on the movie.

The three cartoon-style sets, black, red and blue, were re-issued in 1989 as a 'deluxe' set of 143 cards. I was unaware of that until recently and mine is now in route. I really haven't given much consideration to the two 'photo front' sets. I was a Batman comic guy and the show, while entertaining, wasn't something I really went out of my way to watch after the novelty wore off.

That doesn't mean those two sets don't appeal to my 'completist' side.

Billy Pierce Sketch Card

I bought this on a lark. While I usually like oddball issues (and I have lots of Pierce oddballs) a 'sketch card' seemed kind of...I dunno...'out there' I guess. But I've bought some here and there and I liked this one and for the price I figured "why not?"

The artist has a lot of more limited types of cards on eBay but this is an 'unlimited' edition, whatever that means...probably that he made a bunch of them. I put in a bid for a numbered Johnny Unitas sketch card as well. That will be ending soon. It's rather nice and I'd like to win it. In fact the artist does some pretty good work. I've seen a lot of sports art and some of it is pretty awful but this Edward Vela has talent.

Anyway this is the first addition I've made to my Billy Pierce PC since his passing back on the 31st of July. It'll fit in nicely.

1973/74 Linnett Portaits, Paul Blair & Brooks Robinson

Sports art. I've discussed it before. Charles Linnett did these portraits and they were sold in packs of three. He produced them for just about every professional team at the time. I've had these two for so long I can't remember how I got them.

Linnett's daughters are in the design business these days. Their dad died in 2006. They commented on a Bobby Orr portrait which was shown on another blog a few years back. Here is a checklist of the baseball portraits.

Here is a pic I found of the original packaging: