Illustration Throwback Thursday #66: Strib Sports Cover!

In honor of the end of the 2019 baseball season here’s a look at a job I did for the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper back in early 2008. This was a full page cover of the sports section (above image cropped a bit) to go with coverage that previewed the upcoming MLB season. That year the Minnesota Twins (and the Royals) were considered to be the ‘little guys” amid three “giants” of the division. Here are some of the pencils sketches I sent in:

If I remember right we started out with generic people as players, so no caricatures.

I tried a couple of different poses/compositions for the Twins and Royals players.

At some point they decided to use recognizable star players from each of the big three teams, but stick with generic ones for the Twins and Royals. In the one above there was Jim Thome for the White Sox, C.C. Sabathia for the Indians and I can’t remember who this guy on the right was for the Tigers.

Eventually they decided on this as the final sketch, replacing whoever that guy was with Miguel Cabera for the Tigers. Here’s the uncropped final: