Willard Mullin’s Golden Age of Baseball: Drawings
1934-1972, by Hal Bock and Michael Powers. Fantagraphics Books, Inc.,
Seattle, WA, 2013. HB (picture cover), 240 pp. $35.“I am not an artist,” he was
known to say, “I am a cartoonist.”
Never were both absolute truth
and absolute untruth uttered more succinctly, but when these are the words
famed sports cartoonist Willard Mullin used to describe his own work and
profession, it’s probably not prudent to disagree. Perhaps the best way to
reconcile the conundrum was perfectly addressed in Fantagraphics Books’ latest
baseball effort, Willard Mullin’s Golden Age of Baseball: Drawings
1934-1972, written by Hal Bock and Michael Powers, a sumptuous,
comprehensive homage to a man aptly named by his peers as “Sports Cartoonist of
the Century”.
The oversized, picture-cover
book begins with a wonderful short essay from fellow illustrator Bob Staake
that captures Mullin’s style, work ethic, and influence on the editorial
cartoonist profession. Using words like “maestro”, “genius”, and “standard
bearer”, Staake expertly describes in detail what made Mullin the king of his
particular niche.
Shirley Mullin Rhodes follows
with a heart-warming description of her father, then a posthumous essay on
Mullin by award-winning contemporary cartoonist Bill Gallo and a quick
professional bio by Hal Bock - the eminently respected sports journalist who
wrote for The Associated Press for 40 years – round out the introductory
chapters.
But the meat of the book is a
decade-by-decade history of baseball, geared specifically toward the topics
that attracted Mullin’s attention, with the treat being the hundreds of
detailed, lovingly reproduced Mullin pieces interspersed throughout each
chapter. We see the first appearance of the Brooklyn Dodger “Bum”, the
unmistakable caricatures of baseball luminaries like Babe Ruth, Ed Barrow, Lou
Gehrig, Dizzy Dean, and virtually every other major player in the game.
We see him dip back in history
and present short portrait essays on topics like the comparison of the famed
“$100,000 Infield” of the Philadelphia Athletics with the 1942 Dodgers infield,
which came in at just about double the salary of their predecessors. Readers of the New
York World-Telegram were also just as likely to see the headshot renderings
of famous fans like Toots Shor and George M. Cohan, as well as detailed
likenesses of umpires, managers, owners, and just about everyone associated
with Major League Baseball.
Of course, while those realistic
pieces are simply fantastic, and the small ‘gags’ sprinkled throughout many of
Mullin’s drawings wonderfully corny, his lasting legacy most likely emanates
directly from his wildly inventive mascots. In addition to the Dodger “Bum”,
the Pirate Buccaneer, the oversized New York Giant, the Cardinal’s slick
gambler, the A’s elephant, and the Mets’ infant (modeled after his own 3-year
old grandson, Teddy Rhodes) are permanently etched into the legacy and lore of
baseball. While some have branded some of the more politically incorrect
mascots like the Cleveland Indian and Milwaukee’s Brave as disturbing and even
racist, we must remember that the term politically incorrect was a generation
or two away from even being invented, and cartoons were just that – cartoons!
And it’s curious that Mullin was never able to capture a suitably clever
representation for the Yankees. All that bland, corporate-style winning added
little fuel to the imaginative flames, I imagine.
His was the
perfect melding of time, place, and medium, as Mullin worked during the hey-day
of the newspaper business when cartooning was a well-respected and popular part
of the newspaper business – especially the sports pages - and New York was both
the epicenter of the sporting world, and of baseball in its ascendancy. Now
forever replaced by scrolling box scores and 20-minute sports updates on sports
talk radio, reading – whether it be the daily paper or books or magazines – is
fast becoming a lost skill. But when that was all there was, Willard Mullin was
the best of the best, and in Willard Mullin’s Golden Age of Baseball:
Drawings 1934-1972, by Hal Bock and Michael Powers, we get to relive the
magic of a true original and talented artist during a long gone era when
newspapers ruled – and Mullin was the King of the Cartoonists.