Play Ball! - Bob Laughlin Style

As we get ready for the most unique season in MLB history, I thought this would be a good time to show a Sporting News cover from 1967 that I recently came across featuring the artwork of Bob Laughlin with his representations for each team at the start of the season:

 Here is the full cover from the Feb 25, 1967 issue:

 

Card collectors will recognize Bob's work from his World Series sets that he initially produced himself in B&W

as well as the color World Series and other sets he did for Fleer and other self produced sets in the early to mid-70s:

In fact, in his initial ad for the World Series sets, he mentions doing the above cover for the Sporting News:

If you are interested in checking out The Sporting News archives, they are currently available through a subscription to newspaperarchive.com.  I bought a one month subscription and had a great time reading through articles from the 50's through the 80's.  The database is searchable, so if you want to search for articles on a particular player or team, you can quickly find the pages you are looking for.