It isn’t often that I come across a piece of Sonics
memorabilia that takes me by surprise. I’ve seen – if not all – then very close
to all of it, so when I tell you that I found something amazing, well, take my
word for it, this is something really unique.
I found this particular item from a sale held by Goldin
Auctions for the estate of the late Dennis Johnson (the auction is now closed,
but you can find the link
to the items here). There are the standard jerseys, some signed baseballs
from Pete Rose and Ted Williams among others, contracts, a piece of parquet
floor from the original Boston Garden, and so on.
But what caught my eye was this particular gem, a drawing of
the 1978-79 Seattle SuperSonics (click to enlarge).
It’s wonderful on many levels. You’ve got the autographs of
all the players, the one-liner from Sam Schulman, and, most importantly, the
utterly fantastic drawings of all the players and coaches. Just knowing that
this was something given to each of the players (I would assume, anyway) makes
it even more special. I have to imagine there are a handful of these still in
existence, and it’s possible the team reproduced them for select season-ticket
holders, advertisers, etc. That said, in the bottom left corner is a marking indicating this piece was 28 of 28, which obviously means not a large number of them were made. Still, it’s something I’d never seen before, and
thought was just really exciting to come across. (Also, I was glad to see that Dennis Awtrey was captured in full beard - unlike the team photo that shows him shaven).
You may be wondering – as I was – who the creator of the
piece is. If you look closely in the bottom right-hand corner, you’ll see an
inscription that shows up as (indecipherable) Caplan, which has to make the
artist Irwin “Cap” Caplan.
Caplan isn’t perhaps familiar to most people, but he is a
native Seattlite who went on to fame as a cartoonist with the Saturday Evening
Post, Colliers, and Life, and many others. After a long and noted career that
included art exhibits at the Seattle Art Gallery, the Metropolitan Art Gallery
in New York, and the National Gallery in Washington, Caplan passed away in 2007
(you can read a nicely written piece on his life from the Seattle
Times here).
It’s hard to say how Caplan came to draw this piece – it’s
entirely possible that Caplan was a season-ticket holder, or perhaps just a
friend of people that worked with the team. If nothing else, it just further
cements just how beloved the Sonics were in Seattle in 1979.
