Sports Cartooning Fades

Above: Willard Mullin's drawing of the Brooklyn Dodgers Bum from 1952 via Bob Staake.

For decades, every major paper had a sports cartoonist. Those days are gone. Richard Samdomir writes for the New York Times about the quiet death of the staff newspaper sports cartoonist.

They blended the skills of a caricaturist and the mind-set of a columnist. They were entertainers and ink-stained jokesters. They were newsroom denizens and deadline artists who churned out five or six cartoons a week that received prominent display. If they possessed power, it was that they drew players, owners and managers in ways that reporters could not with their words. 

Sports cartoons were usually more amusing and informative than critical, which reflected the times when the sports section was the fun-and-games department.

Hat tip to Jim Nolan! Thanks, Jim.