Tri-Cornered Baseball Game program cover, edited

Willard Mullin (September 14, 1902 – December 20, 1978) was an American sports cartoonist. He is most famous for his creation of the "Brooklyn Bum", the personification of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team, based on circus clown

Emmett Kelly Emmett Leo Kelly (December 9, 1898March 28, 1979) was an American circus performer, who created the clown figure "Weary Willie," based on the hobos of the Great Depression in the 1930s. According to Charles W. Carey, Jr.: :Kelly’s creation of ...

's "Weary Willie" hobo persona. He was widely published: he cartooned daily for

Scripps-Howard The E. W. Scripps Company is an American broadcasting company founded in 1878 as a chain of daily newspapers by Edward Willis "E. W." Scripps and his sister, Ellen Browning Scripps. It was also formerly a media conglomerate. The company is he ...

's ''

New York World-Telegram and Sun The ''New York World-Telegram'', later known as the ''New York World-Telegram and The Sun'', was a New York City newspaper from 1931 to 1966. History Founded by James Gordon Bennett Sr. as ''The Evening Telegram'' in 1867, the newspaper began ...

'' for decades and was often published in Scripps-Howard's twenty papers, as well as in the '' Sporting News''.

Publications

Mullin was often commissioned to draw cover illustrations for yearbooks of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Giants, and---after those teams moved to the West Coast---the

New York Mets The New York Mets are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of Queens. The Mets compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member of the National League (NL) East division. They are one of two major league ...

. Mullin also did covers for Harlem Globetrotters yearbooks. When the Mets looked to be winning the National League East in 1969, ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

'' commissioned Mullin to draw a cover for a feature on the team.

Jerry Mitchell Jerry Mitchell is an American theatre director and choreographer. Early life and education Born in Paw Paw, Michigan, Mitchell later moved to St. Louis where he pursued his acting, dancing and directing career in theatre. Although he did not ...

's history of the early Mets, ''The Amazin' Mets'', featured several previously published Mullin cartoons illustrating their early struggles. An oversize retrospective collection of Willard Mullin cartoons, titled ''Willard Mullin's Golden Age of Baseball: Drawings 1934–1972'', was published by Fantagraphics Books in 2013. The book also contains biographical and historical information. In 2015, Fantagraphics Books published ''Willard Mullin's Casey at the Bat and Other Diamond Tales''. This book features Mullin's thirteen drawings to match the thirteen verses of Ernest Thayer's famous baseball poem, the poem as written in Mullin's once-celebrated cartoon lettering style, and a few selections from Mullin's other baseball cartoons. Until the Fantagraphics publication, the Mullin "Casey" had only ever been seen by those who attended an early 1950s convention of the National Association, then the overseers of Minor League Baseball and were given copies of the Mullin "Casey."

Awards

He received the

Reuben Award The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the ...

in 1954 for his work, as well as the National Cartoonists Society Sports Cartoon Award for each year from 1957 through 1962, and again in 1964 and 1965.

References

External links

Willard Mullin illustrationsNCS Awards
1902 births 1978 deaths American cartoonists Reuben Award winners {{US-cartoonist-stub