Now we are fifteen

The first post on this blog was made on August 29, 2003, and promoted a book I had serendipitously picked up, Christopher Bing's beautifully illustrated edition of Casey at the Bat.  We still have the book on a shelf in the next room - it has shared five homes with us over the years, and I still pick it up occasionally just to marvel.  Here is an example of the art:

After the book came out, other artists would get in touch with Bing and ask where he got all that great vintage clip art.  He had to explain that there was no clip art - he'd created every paper scrap, every matchbook cover, every detail, himself.  The people in the pictures were mostly his friends, plus the gas reader because he needed one more face for that page.  The umpire is (of course) his father.

I might appreciate this even more now than I did back in 2003.  As attention spans shorten it feels as if books like this are getting harder to find.  Why make something so incredibly rich in detail, if people aren't going to appreciate it?  Well, because some people have to create such things, I suppose, regardless of whether the audience gets it or not.  As Wes Anderson once said, rejecting a colleague's suggestion:  "that’s the sort of thing we would do if we were making a film that we wanted people to go and see."

Bing's book could have been just as popular with about 50% less work, but it wouldn't be perfect, and one gets the sense that if it weren't perfect he wouldn't be able to sleep at night.  Thank goodness it is.

Here are two brief, fairly recent, videos of Bing talking about the project:






In summary, this is a very fine book and we feel vindicated that our 2003 recommendation was sound and has stood the test of time.  You should consider getting a copy for yourself, if you don't have one already.

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