Yearbook Cover Derby Round 1.14 1964 vs 2016

[Benjamin Grimm]

1964



2016

[Edgy MD]

I'm going to chew on this a mite bit. That may be the weakest of the Mullin covers, but the perspective seems off on the 2016 cover, which is a little bit visually challenging.

Also, they're in their full kit except for spikes, which they apparently can't wear because they aren't on the field, but in a studio. So they're wearing ratty running shoes.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I love the Mullin covers, although admittedly this isn't the best of them. But I doubt that I'll ever vote against a Mullin cover unless there are two of them competing against each other.

If they had to go with a posed photo, I would have preferred the cover commemorating the 2015 champs to have been taken outside, on green grass with a blue sky, instead of in somebody's basement. An action shot from the 2015 postseason would have been better, maybe the Mets celebrating on the field in Chicago or L.A.? Unfortunately, the most iconic photo from that postseason is of Chase Utley breaking Ruben Tejada's leg, and that would have been a very strange choice for a yearbook cover.

[dgwphotography]

My God, 2015 seems so long ago....

Any Mullin cover beats any photographed portrait, even if it was shot by Joe McNally (which this wasn’t)

[MFS62]

Willard Mullin over, well, just about any other graphic.
Later

[stevejrogers]

2016 looks more like a poster than a memorabilia publication cover.

[G-Fafif]

2016's cover is actually a triptych. Fold it out and meet nine more National League champion Mets, their manager, plus two new acquisitions and one DL holdover. Matz, Granderson, Syndergaard, Flores, Collins and d'Arnaud form the second serious as death clump (actually, Grandy is grinning), Duda, Conforto, Wheeler, Colon, Cabrera, Walker and Lagares (a smaller smile) the other. Depending on how you define the cover, it probably set a record for most Mets pictured.

Can't beat that logo. Happy to be faced by five essential pennant-winners. Their scowls are suitably intimidating. Harvey's so plugged in that his ball hovers from the electricity he produces. One cover would have been sufficient to express that the 2016 Mets retained most of the 2015 Mets and the 2015 Mets were league champions. Perfectly clean motif.

Good luck taking that to the plate against Willard Mullin.

Did a 91-231 enterprise ever express more confidence in its future? Try to beat us, ya NL thugs. We'll distract you with our gleaming new stadium and we'll pull the welcome mat out on ya. Then we'll take ya to the World's Fair, weigh ya down with Belgian waffles and unhospitable ya all over again!

Bonus points for this being the FINAL edition. If we get any more players, read about 'em in '65.

This cover says everything the Mets could possibly say in 1964 and says it with charm. All at once we are on the Mets' side. Not that we weren't when we bought the yearbook, but Willard not only reinforced our love of the Mets, he made clear we were hear to beat somebody. And we won more games than we ever had before. Two more games, but the last two were at the expense of the St. Louis Cardinals, trying to clinch their own flag, so there ya go.

I received the '64 yearbook as a gift when I was 19. It was the first time (despite plenty of reading) that it really sunk in that the Mets existed as the Mets before I found them. These guys on these pages are who Mets fans rooted for, just as the Mets of just a few years later and those who followed forever after would come to mean the Mets to me. They weren't just names and statistics anymore. They were Mets. The yearbook at is most powerful.

One season dawned in the wake of a World Series. The other occurred nowhere near one. Yet the latter (technically the earlier) is the champion here.

[Guest 41Forever]

I like the 2016 cover. I do suspect that the players were shot individually and PhotoShopped together -- the lighting seems a little odd.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

i always liked 64 because it played to the the idea that the Mets once upon a time considered humor and solidarity with fans as worthy pillars upon which it could build a brand. By 2016 we're completely out of humor. This cover seems to say THERE NOTHING FUCKING FUNNY ABOUT BASEBALL, IT'S ABOUT SUCCESS WHICH THESE GUYS ACHIEVED LAST YEAR AND YOU, THE FAN, SHOULD WANT SO BUY THIS SLICK TESTAMENT TO OUR BRAND VALUE, WHICH AS YOU KNOW IS SUCCESS, FORGED HERE IN OUR GRAY BASEMENT STUDIO.

[Edgy MD]

Well, then you got me. 1964 is my vote.

It still would have been a lot more successfully rendered if not for Mullin being forced to work around that monochrome-tinted b/w photo circle that hardly honors Shea in her debut as much as a color photo (which I gather would have been a cost-averse proposition) or Mullin including the stadium in his artwork. If that doormat was at the gate of a Mullin-illustrated Shea, instead of at the threshold of a circular window into space, how much sweeter would that have been?

[Guest cooby]

Looks like they’re pulling away the welcome mat

[Benjamin Grimm]

There's something strange about center field in that photo. It's oddly truncated. I'm not at all sure what's going on.

[dinosaur jesus]

That 1964 cover is so screwed up, it's hard to figure out what's going on. It's like they took a simple gag and tried to work so many things into it that it turned surreal. The welcome mat gag is actually pretty clever--the Mets are pulling the rug out from under the rest of the league and showing that they're not doormats anymore. But a doormat should be in front of a door. Instead, there's a circle with a view of Shea. Maybe it was originally supposed to be a door, and they decided to evoke the World's Fair by making it look like the World's Fair globe (though it doesn't really). But then it doesn't register as a door, which makes the doormat nonsensical. And Casey is supposed to be hiding behind the door/globe, but it looks instead like he's straining to support it on his shoulders, like Atlas. Which means the huge visiting player is Hercules, and Casey is going to try to trick him into taking the globe from him? Probably not, but who knows? The visiting player is supposed to be distracted by the magnificence of Shea, so Casey and the kid can take advantage of him. And why shouldn't he be distracted? Shea seems to be contained within a floating bubble, as if a portal to another dimension had suddenly appeared. (It looks like the crystal egg in an H. G. Wells story, in which you can see Mars.) I'd like to think that that bubble is still bobbing around somewhere, and inside it's still Shea Stadium in 1964.

Anyway, that's the cover I voted for.

[Edgy MD]

dj pretty much sums up what I was saying far more eloquently.

[Guest d'Kong76]

My least favorite of the Mullin run but it still blows away the NL Champs.

[RealityChuck]

Neither is particularly good, but Mullen is a pretty mediocre artist. He should not have been doing covers.

[batmagadanleadoff]

If Willard Mullin came back to life and went back to doing his thing, illustrating and getting his political cartoon style pieces into the sports section of one of the NYC tabloids, the philistine Wilpons would never think to have him do the current Mets yearbook covers.

[batmagadanleadoff]

RealityChuck wrote: Neither is particularly good, but Mullen is a pretty mediocre artist. He should not have been doing covers.

I think that this is crazy talk.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Yeah, I think Mullin is great. I wish he had done every cover for the last 57 seasons.

I don't really have a sense about how this competition is going to turn out, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Final Four was comprised entirely of Willard Mullin covers.

[Guest d'Kong76]

RealityChuck wrote: ... Mullen is a pretty mediocre artist. He should not have been doing covers.

Heart palpitations, where are my pills...

[Zvon]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: There's something strange about center field in that photo. It's oddly truncated. I'm not at all sure what's going on.

That's an architects drawing.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Zvon wrote: Benjamin Grimm wrote: There's something strange about center field in that photo. It's oddly truncated. I'm not at all sure what's going on. That's an architects drawing.

That's right. That was a conceptual drawing of Flushing Stadium that was circulating since 1962, appearing in media, promotional materials, Rheingold sponsored schedules, etc.. Given the lead time needed to publish a yearbook in 1964, that rendering might've been the best the organization could've come up with.