The Flagg Collection #3 – Ken Griffey Jr. KENETICS 1991 Nike Poster
For real, serious sports poster collectors and enthusiasts, this feature is for you! On a periodic basis, I’ll be using this blog to display and describe the holdings of The Flagg Collection – the personal collection of rare and vintage posters held by me, Neil Flagg, the founder and President of SportsPosterWarehouse.com.
For the third entry in this blog series, I’m showing off a true classic for fans of 1990s baseball and the great Hall of Fame slugger Ken Griffey Jr. This is from the height of the legendary Nike era of sports poster dominance, when the shoe company was more famous for its TV commercials and ancillary products like posters, than it was for footwear! Characteristic of Nike’s design creativity of the time, this full-sized 24″x36″ poster portrays the young, dynamic phenom Ken Griffey Jr. in the context of a physics experiment – instead of “Kinetics”, it’s “Kenetics”, studying the motion not of ordinary human mortals, but of the sweet-swinging Seattle Mariners superstar.
Check out the slim, baby-faced Junior in just his third Major League season here, displaying his picture-perfect swing mechanics for the camera (with a focus on his Nike cleats, of course). The graphics include blueprint-style geometrical calculations, and at the top-left, the following tongue-in-cheek text:
“Kenetics: a branch of baseball science that deals with the effects of the Griffey force upon the motion of the fastball, the curveball, the slider, the knuckleball, the forkball, spitball, scuffball, or mudball, inasmuch as that force is responsible for out-of-the-park trajectories of batted balls. Kenetics also explains how aerodynamic forces are overcome in order to raise the batting coefficient over .300.”
It’s hard to tell how many of these ever made it to market, but I’m guessing it was very few. It is a 1991 release, and 1991 was the year Nike transitioned from 24″x36″ sized posters, down to 23″x35″, in order to have their posters fit in more store display racks throughout the retail landscape. Also, the Mariners only wore this style of uniform for one more season, meaning these would have had to have been discontinued by the end of 1992 at the latest. And, through simple observation over the years – you just never see these available anywhere! A very tough find. At one time, we had about a dozen in stock at SportsPosterWarehouse.com from a large warehouse stock purchase we made in the early 2000s; however, those are now gone, and this was the last one, now preserved for all-time as part of the Flagg Collection, it is amazing to see how people are so into these posters as well as to betting with blackjack online just to show everyone how much they love their teams, and of course, to get money as well. As with most of the posters in The Flagg Collection, I’ve had this one canvas-transferred to preserve it forever with durability, in an easy-to-display format.
As Griffey is now enshrined in Cooperstown, this poster is definitely a Hall of Fame-worthy showpiece. As someone who came of age as Griffey emerged into stardom, and who started in the poster business when Junior was still one of the top-5 superstars in the game, this one will always hold a special place in the collection!
Explore posts in the same categories: The Flagg Collection of Classic Sports Posters, UncategorizedTags: Ken Griffey Jr, mlb posters, nike posters, seattle mariners
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The Sports Posters Blog 
September 2, 2017 at 3:14 am
I have overt 40 griffey posters in my collection now but this was the first one I had, and part of the reason I became such a huge griffey fan. My favorite though is the Nike horns poster that was released in 97 or 98 but this one will always have a special place in my collection.
February 13, 2021 at 6:20 am
i have this nike poster deadstock in plastic. what would you estimate value? i can provide pics if needed. thanks for the article! love learning about vintage local teams.