Johnny Pomorski: Chesty’s Last Stand
Johnny Pomorski’s career started out with high expectations. Yet, as so often happens, things just didn’t work out as they were supposed to. But at the age of 42, Johnny was handed one last chance to shine… […]
Category: Minor Leagues
Country Brown: It felt like I was in the Major Leagues
In the decade before the Dodgers and Giants moved west and the Major League added more teams, each corner of the country had their own minor league heroes who to them, were anything but minor. The west coast worshipped Steve Bilko, the southwest cheered for Joe Bauman, the northeast loved Luke Easter, and down south, no one player was cheered more than Country Brown. […]
“Rosey” Rosenstein: The Flamingo Kid
Among the 200,000 U.S. Army soldiers that stormed ashore on the Philippine island of Leyte in November of 1944 was a 24 year-old staff sergeant named Milt Rosenstein. Just three years earlier he had a spectacular first season in professional ball, winning 20 games, led his league in strikeouts and pitched the Miami Beach Flamingos to the Florida East Coast League Championship. […]
Joe DiMaggio: Deadpan Joe from the Coast
With three games left in their 1932 schedule, the San Francisco Seals found themselves without a shortstop. That’s when the Seals’ centerfielder recommended they try out his teenage brother named Joe – Joe DiMaggio… […]
Eddie Sabrie: Baseball Wanderer
As so often happens, I was on my way to something else when I inadvertently unearthed a pretty interesting fellow who used his baseball talent to not only play professional ball, but see a bit of the world as well. […]
My Process Part 10: Condensing Jake’s life down to 185 words
Probably the most difficult part of doing my stories and illustration is the write-up that goes on the back of the card. Despite what you might think, it’s really hard to tell a story in 185 words. I believe the thing that makes what I do different than anyone else is that I write […]
My Process Part 9: Where in the world is Jake Levy
Over the years, many people have remarked about the backgrounds I have in my illustrations. I’m happy people notice them because I go out of my way to make sure they compliment the players. I want them to appear comfortable in the world they inhabit. Sometimes you can see a panoramic view of the […]
My Process Part 8: Digitizing Jake
Because I’ve been doing my baseball card illustrations for over ten years, I have developed a system of sorts. Back in 2010 when I started, I had to not only do the player drawing themselves, but also come up with the whole design of the “card.” There’s many artists out there who repurpose […]
My Process Part 7: Paint it (actually, ink it) Black
Back in art school I had a drawing professor that most students hated. It wasn’t because he was a bad teacher – on the contrary, he was terrific. At the time I had my first class with him, he was at the pinnacle of his own career, coming off a couple decades as one […]
My Process Part 6: Let the drawing begin!
With all the reference material assembled – images of Jake, uniform references, personal details – I’m ready to start drawing. Ninety-nine percent of the time I already have a good idea in my head of what I want the player’s pose to be. In Jake’s case, I liked the idea that he was both […]