Sports: Indoor and Outdoor

I could care less about sports (is it could or couldn't? Whichever one means “who gives a shit?”). I just see a bunch of flying colors when they're on the screen. I never even know when the Superbowl is. If you were to show me a picture of a strong person and falsely tell me they were a professional athlete, I'd believe you. Mention a team name, I won't even know what sport that is. That said, I like these cartoons.

These cartoons, from Comic Art In America in 1959, represent what was prominent on the sports pages of newspapers at that time. The captions to all these cartoons say more than I ever could.

As much as I like these cartoons, they still haven't convinced me to care about sports.

Herewith the captions:

Floyd Johnson never reached the top, but HYPE IGOE did. The cross-hatching was almost an IGOE trademark.

Sketches of Tim Hegarty and Kid Lavigne, by the great DORGAN, from the New York Evening Journal in December 1904.

TAD DORGAN once more. This Outdoor Sports was drawn shortly before he died.

RUBE GOLDBERG's preview of the Dempsey-Carpentier fight. This was done fifteen years after he left San Francisco, and the figures at the right give some idea of the kind of thing he had been doing all along.

Four immortals drawn by BOB EDGREN for the New York World in 1927. He used many techniques; this was soft pencil.

Some of EDWARD WINDSOR KEMBLE's baseball figures, from Harper's Weekly of July 28, 1900.

A typical Believe it or Not, this one from 1935. Two of the items are on sports,ROBERT RIPLEY's first love.

The lost days of fistic glory: comment by BURRIS JENKINS. JR., on the Ross-McLarnin fight, September 1934.

BILL CRAWFORD helps the Dodgers toward victory.

Golfing luminaries as drawn by PETE LLAZUNA in 1931.

[BELOW LEFT]WILLARD MULLIN's comment on the desertion of the Dodgers and the Giants.

[BELOW RIGHT] Another MULLIN. His bums—originally Brooklyn Dodger fans—are now classic.

LOU DARVAS, in the Cleveland Press, comments on the infrequency of Floyd Patterson's heavyweight title defenses. 1958.

MURRAY OLDERMAN's comment on Bill Veeck, a startlingly individualistic baseball executive.

A group of sketches by KARL HUBENTHAL for the Los Angeles Examiner. Hubenthal does editorial cartoons for the same newspaper.

This is one of TOM PAPROCKI's great cartoons for the AP. Pace, Variety, and good drawing. Drawn in April, 1937.

JOHN PIEROTTI looks askance at the complicated struggle for the middleweight championship.

LEO's version of the old Brooklyn Dodger fan.

Sorry I couldn't include everything in the tags. Blogger will only let me use 200 characters.

it's gonna be just ESQUIRE for the next couple weeks

from ESQUIRE, June 1962

from ESQUIRE, July 1962




from “At Last the Mighty Marvelous Wald Machine”, ESQUIRE May 1962, illustrated by Arnold Roth


from ESQUIRE, May 1968

from ESQUIRE, May 1969

from “Haight-Ashbury Today: a Case of Terminal Euphoria”, ESQUIRE July 1969 illustrated by Alain LeSaux

Esquire pages

One good thing about my father being a pack rat is that he saved all his old magazines.

There's lots of great stuff in them which means I won't be scrambling at the last minute to find material for a while. Most Saturdays I'll have things to put up. There are thousands of pages I'm not going to scan them all. Right now I'll stick mostly to the visuals.

The down side is that some of these magazines are tabloid size and I don't have a scanner big enough, but I'll try to match the halves of pages. There are also some double-page spreads and some magazines have spines like books and no margins, but again I'll do my best to make things legible.

ESQUIRE was not only 11"x14", but was often 200+ pages, and it wasn't trying to be like MAXIM (no offense to anyone I know now who works for either). Some issues even had cut-outs and fabric samples. All this for only a dollar. And 40-50 years ago contributors probably got paid the same as they do now. Rates for cartoonists and illustrators don't change with inflation.

illustrations by Marie Severin




by Bob Zoell from Esquire, September 1969

Illustrations for 'The Sour Grapes Statement' by Alain Lesaux, ESQUIRE September 1969






This is the kind of stuff they were doing at Sterling-Cooper.


I was going to save this for a few weeks from now, when I'll be posting lots of stuff from these magazines every Saturday, but a last-minute change of conscience made me bump off what I had planned and put this in its slot instead. I was going to post something called “Batfag and Sparrow”. It's actually pretty harmless with the worst part being the epithet in the title, but I don't need people to think I'm a bigot. I don't want this blog to show up in Google search engines along with Westboro Baptist Church. It's tough to “go there” since any defense will make me sound like an asshole (more so than already). It's easy for me to see humor in political incorrectness being a straight white male. I could say I have gay friends or that I'm making fun of someone who would find this funny, both of which are true, but they're also excuses everyone's heard a million times. I could point to other things in mainstream culture far worse. I could say THE BIG BOOK OF GAY told me it was okay. Ultimately, I just don't want to create a misunderstanding over something antithetical to my own views. Not everyone gets irony. Maybe I'm making too much of this. I'll put it up if enough people want me to.