Illustrating the Spirit of Sports in St. Louis

St. Louis is inextricably linked to its sports culture. It has been home to several professional sports teams, including baseball, basketball, football, and hockey. The city has hosted numerous sporting events, such as the 1904 Summer Olympics and 2005 NCAA Final Four. Illustrations for program events and newspapers engage with prominent landmarks of the city, such as the Gateway Arch and Busch Stadium.

The Gateway Arch often serves as the backdrop for sports programs, and in the playful imagination of cartoonist John Blair Moore, it transforms into a sports ground! Moore (1948–2018) was a prolific illustrator from St. Louis, Missouri, known for his work with DC and Disney. Today, these illustrated objects and cartoons not only serve as a snapshot into the sports heritage of St. Louis but also celebrate artists from St. Louis.

One such sports illustrator from St. Louis was Amadee Wohlschlaeger, professionally known simply as Amadee. He was a twentieth-century American sports cartoonist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This era of print journalism was marked by social and political commentary through cartoons in newspapers.

Amadee was a visual correspondent who shared his observations on sports news, culture, and social life with regular cartoon strips in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He started working at the newspaper at the age of 14 as a copy boy. At 17, he joined the newspaper’s art department.

In 1932, he took over as the artist for the Weatherbird cartoon and drew it for more than 49 years. The Weatherbird cartoon was introduced in 1901 as a single-panel cartoon that shared the weather forecast. Over the years, it evolved as a commentary on local and national news.

Dan Martin, a fellow Post-Dispatch cartoonist, shared in an interview that Amadee used ebony graphite and pencil on a social board in his cartooning process, connecting Amadee to nineteenth-century newspaper cartooning as he learned techniques from cartoonists from the 1890s. His cartoons and drawings captured sports history unlike any other media.

The frenzy of sports makes a city come alive, and Amadee’s illustrations captured that essence. Amadee’s cartoon of the Cardinals’ beloved Mark McGwire, in the Apotheosis of St. Louis, is a tribute to the influence of baseball in the city. Gestural ink lines and washes of color playfully embody the spirit of sports. McGwire’s bat breaks the framework of the cover with the horse ready to take off! Amadee illustrated several programs for events held by the St. Louis chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA).

Amadee’s cartoon stadium posters uniquely engage with sports trivia and history to memorialize a stadium’s landscape and legacy in pen and ink.

John Blair Moore’s illustration for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Magazine cover features two prominent bird mascots of St. Louis. It is a tribute to the legacy of the Weatherbird and Fredbird (the mascot of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team) and commemorates the restoration of Busch Stadium’s natural grass field in 1996.

Cardinals are synonymous with the city of St. Louis. Several covers of programs and media guides for the St. Louis Cardinals football team from 1960 to 1987 feature a cardinal swooping across the city. The ‘Big Red’ team’s color, cardinal red, is prominent in these cover designs. They also feature the Gateway Arch, which would have been a new symbol for the city since it was constructed in the 1960s.

The impact that sports have had on the city of St. Louis can be observed through several lenses. But it is in the seemingly mundane, everyday artifacts, such as the illustrated menu for Ozzie’s Restaurant and Sports Bar, where one can see how sports have been such an integral part of life in St. Louis.

One might find several advertisements while flipping through sports publications and programs. Advertisements have always been a reflection of a society’s lifestyle and aspirations. Advertisements in NFL programs depict a world that revolves around sports. Some advertisements describe and promote aspirational “game plans” that involve enjoying “leisurely brunches” and a stay at the Marriott’s Pavilion Hotel, or “your favorite McDonald’s sandwich” at the Riverboat McDonald’s.

Postcards, stickers, logos and pins feature Busch Stadium, Sportsman Park, and the Gateway Arch, recurring architectural symbols representing St. Louis and its teams. The spirit of sports in St. Louis continues to persevere through these artifacts.

Lewis Levey spent 75 years of his life collecting sports memorabilia. The Lewis A. Levey Family Collection on Sports and Culture is a testament to his lifelong passion for sports and the cornerstone of the Levey Sports and Culture Archive. From an early age, he collected ticket stubs, event programs, art, books, autographs, and sports artifacts of many kinds. The collection is largely centered on Levey’s hometown, St. Louis, and contains a treasure of sports visual culture.

For more information about the Levey Sports and Culture Archive, please contact Tim Huskey, Levey Curator of Sports and Culture, at thuskey@wustl.edu.

Shivani Shenoy is an MFA Illustration and Visual Culture candidate at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, Washington University in St Louis. This story originally appeared on WashU Libraries.