The cheese-mo baseball posters of the 80s

Chicago Cubs Poster Sports Illustrated. Jerome Walton, Mitch Williams, Mark Grace, Ryne Sandberg, Shawon Dunston, Dwight Smith. 1989 All Stars

What happened to the multi-player posters from the 80s? These posters are a great blast from the past with their combination of highlighting the popular players from a team, along with being done in an ultra cheesy design.

Although I do have to tip my hat to the picture selection in this 1989 Cubs poster by Sports Illustrated. Jerome Walton and Mark Grace batting provide nice bookends framing the falling Mitching Williams in the center. In the bottom row, Ryne Sandberg and Dwight Smith strike a running pose to frame the leaping Shawon Dunston. If you are going to do cheesy design, you might as well make it symmetrical.

It’s kinda funny now how this old photo of Wrigley makes you nostaglic for the days of Wrigley Field before they expanded the bleachers. The days of regular rooftops with plastic lawnchairs that didn’t make millions. I wonder if there are Cubs fans from the 50s that are nostalgic for this view of Wrigley when there wasn’t high-rise buildings in the background.

These posters truly capture a moment in time. A search on MLB.com’s online shop doesn’t yield any sort of multi-player poster. I was hoping for at least some sort of collage of players from a team. But it looks like this tradition has been rolled up and stored in poster tubes of closets.

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3 thoughts on “The cheese-mo baseball posters of the 80s”

  1. If you want your fill of cheese-mo in today’s world, you can still find it in baseball calendars. Walk around any mall and you’ll find a shop with a calendar section and you’ll very likely find a calendar of your local sports team that follows similar design cues.

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