The Flagg Collection #4 – “Mr. Hockey and The Great One” (Nike 1990) – Gordie Howe and Wayne Gretzky

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 fourth entry in this blog series, I’m bringing you a rare Nike classic with a controversial history. The content isn’t controversial at all – “Mr. Hockey”, Gordie Howe and “The Great One”, Wayne Gretzky, in uniform, together on the ice in a classic pose, what could be wrong with that?

It was Nike’s use of the image that was the problem. According to a story I heard told way back in the late 1990s, this poster was discontinued and recalled by Nike soon after publication in 1990, due to a licensing issue with the picture. It seems the photo was part of a private shoot done for, I believe, the Coca-Cola company, and was not supposed to be released for any other use outside of Coke advertising. Apparently, the lawyers got to Nike, and the poster had to be discontinued and withdrawn from the market.

That didn’t stop a small quantity from getting out to the market, and we managed to obtain a stack of about 20 of them back in the day. They’re all long-gone, sold off to prime customers over the years, until we only had this last one left – and into the personal collection it went. 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.

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!

The Flagg Collection #2: 1972 Oakland A’s World Champs ProMotions MLB Baseball 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 collected by me, Neil Flagg, the founder and President of SportsPosterWarehouse.com.

As the second entry in this blog series, I’m pleased to show off another classic from 1972 (which happens to be the year of my birth). This is the ultimate get for fans of the Oakland A’s franchise, and collectors of the 1971-72 ProMotions series that featured brilliant artistic collages for each of baseball’s 24 teams of the era. I’m not quite sure how these posters were sold back in the day, but my guess would be some sort of mail-order promotion through sports magazine advertisements.

The artwork on every poster in the series is amazing, and this one is no exception. They all just SCREAM early-1970s in style, as 1960s psychedelia combines with a dose of more gritty 1970s realism, to make the time frame unmistakeable. The players in each poster are intended to be generic (seems these were licensed by the league, but not the player’s association), but fans of the era usually pick up on the artist’s intention (maybe a little Bert Campaneris, Gene Tenace, Catfish Hunter and Joe Rudi resemblance here?)

The artist “Smith” captures the amazing Charlie O. Finley era “Swingin’ A’s” style to perfection in this poster. The green-and-gold color palette, the moustachio’d players, the Bay Area scenery, and, of course, the on-field success. This was released soon after the A’s first of three-consecutive World Series championships, the 1972 victory over the Cincinnati Reds’ Big Red Machine.

As a championship commemorative, an iconic keepsake of an era, and as simply a brilliant work of baseball art, this one has it all – one of my all-time favorite posters. 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.

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Classic Photo: Brett Favre’s Sports Poster-Filled Dorm Room, c.1989

An awesome picture somehow dug up by the sports gossip site TerezOwens.com! Some of the great old-school posters seen on Brett’s ceiling: Jose Canseco “40-40”, Jerry Rice “Goldfingers”, Michael Jordan “Big-Time” Door-Sized, Bo Jackson “Double Trouble” (Royals & Raiders), Dwight Gooden 1980s SI Poster, Joe Montana “Job Security”, and what looks like QB posters of Randall Cunningham and Warren Moon, among others. (Note that TerezOwens calls this “Brett Favre at 23”, but that would date this picture at 1992, when he was already an NFL QB with the Atlanta Falcons. Most likely, this is Brett in his Southern Miss dorm room, circa 1989.

Brett Favre in his Dorm Room at Southern Miss, c.1989.

Jackie Robinson Day: A lasting legacy

Baseball holidays rarely transcend outside the sport — you celebrate Opening Day, but it doesn’t have an impact outside baseball and its fans. But Jackie Robinson Day is a different case, as April 15 celebrates a day that resonates across all sports and American culture. The day commemorates the anniversary of Robinson’s major-league debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, a landmark moment as the first African-American to break baseball’s color barrier.

No image captures that historic aspect of the day better than this photo taken from April 15, 1947 — Robinson, arm in arm with three white Dodgers teammates: Spider Jorgensen, Pee Wee Reese, and Eddie Stanky. This was a sport embracing something in a way that helped society do the same.

What do you remember most about Jackie Robinson? If you’ve seen the new movie “42” celebrating his life, what did you like best about the movie? This is a day to celebrate all things Jackie Robinson, so your comments are welcome.