Illustration Throwback Thursday: Twins Poster!

No, not Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito, the Minnesota Twins pro baseball team.

Back in the mid 2000’s I did an illustration of the entire Minnesota Twins baseball team roster each year, which was given away as a poster at the ballpark on the last home game of the season aka “Kid’s Appreciation Day”. This gig didn’t pay much, but in addition to a little money I got two full season tickets to the Twins as well as all the stadium giveaway swag. I did posters from 2003-2006 ( I think), and they were all original watercolor/mixed media paintings which the Twins got the originals of.

I usually do not do work for trade like this, especially when the job is as much work as these were. However those season tickets created many special dad/kid days and evenings. I would take one of my four kids to the game on a rotating basis all summer long for some special one-on-one dad time. They grew up loving baseball, the experience of going to a big league game, hot dogs, and learning how to keep score. In fact, I’ll be curious to see if, when they eventually bring their kids to a ballgame and fill out the score card, they follow my time-honored practice of always entering the names of the umpires as “M. Magoo, H. Keller, S. Wonder and R. Charles“.

After the 2006 season they stopped hiring me for the promotion, except for the 2012 season when I did the one seen above. This time I did it digitally, as they refused to give me season tickets in their big, shiny new stadium and only gave me a suite for one game.

Incidentally. here’s the key for the poster: