Vintage Susan Rini World Champion 1961 Yankees Uncut Postcard Sheet ⚾ Mantle Maris Historic Limited Editions MLB Licensed Art Wall Display

Remember the 1961 Yankees? ⚾ Thirty-Six Yankees, All Together, Never Cut Apart

Size: 22" x 17" ~ Unused and uncut.

I love a piece that hands you the whole story instead of a fragment, and this is about as whole as it gets: one big sheet of cardstock carrying thirty-six painted portraits of the 1961 World Champion New York Yankees, laid out six across and six down, still joined at every edge the way it came off the press. A bold black band reading WORLD CHAMPION 1961 YANKEES runs straight through the middle, with a Major League Baseball "Official Licensee" mark at each end of it. Mickey Mantle swings in his number seven right up in the top corner. Nothing here is cut and nothing is framed, and the back is plain - just the paintings, all thirty-six of them, as a set.

🖌️ The Woman Who Painted Them

Look into any panel and you'll find the artist worked right into the paint: "S. Rini" is signed into every one. Susan Rini made her name painting ballplayers for Historic Limited Editions, a publisher that turned her portraits into postcard sets from the late 1980s into the early 1990s, starting with a 1988 Brooklyn Dodgers release and going on to the 1961 Yankees and the 1969 Mets, among others.

📮 The Postcards This Art Was Made Into

Historic Limited Editions published Rini's 1961 Yankees as three series of twelve postcards, thirty-six cards in all, and card graders catalog the release as a 1991 issue. One surviving card back reads "PUBLISHED BY HISTORIC LIMITED EDITIONS, BOX 400, WILLISTON PARK, NY," alongside the player's name, "From original artwork by Susan Rini," and the series and card number. Series 1 carries Berra, Tresh, Skowron, Downing, Coates, Arroyo, Blanchard, Lopez, Kubek, Houk, Richardson and Boyer. Series 2 carries Maris, Gonder, McDevitt, Thomas, Gardner, Terry, Reniff, Torgeson, Ditmar, Reed, James and Howard. Series 3 opens with Mantle as card number one and runs Johnson, Hale, Stafford, Maas, Cerv, Sheldon, Duren, Turley, Ford, Daley and DeMaestri. Thirty-six paintings, thirty-six cards - the count on this sheet matches the set.

🖼️ The Same Paintings, a Different Printing

Set a postcard beside this sheet and the artwork matches exactly, right down to the signage behind the player: Deron Johnson in front of the ANACIN and Coca-Cola boards, Duke Maas by the Kodel sign, Whitey Ford glowing against a second figure of himself, Ryne Duren behind his own glasses. What's different is everything printed around the art. Each postcard adds a pinstriped side panel, "New York Yankees" in script, the top-hat Yankees logo, the player's name, and the printed back I quoted above. This sheet carries none of that - just the paintings, the title band and the two MLB marks, over a blank back. No postcard could be trimmed from this one; it's a separate printing of the same thirty-six pictures.

🏟️ Faces and Signs I Can Point To

A few of these panels I can place with real confidence. Top left, the batter finishing his swing in number seven is Mickey Mantle - that jersey number is right there in the paint. Whitey Ford's panel has that glowing second figure of himself behind his portrait, and Elston Howard's has a glowing batter behind his. Johnny James stands in front of the Yoo-Hoo sign. And the painted "457 ft" marker, and the "461 ft" marker elsewhere on the sheet, are the real dimensions of the old Yankee Stadium's deep left-center, the gap ballplayers nicknamed Death Valley. Rini painted the whole outfield wall right along with her players: Ballantine's "it's a HIT" board, Coca-Cola, ANACIN, Yoo-Hoo, Kodel and Supp-hose signs, an ECONO board, and a stippled, painted crowd filling the stands behind every one of them.

🏆 The Team on the Banner

WORLD CHAMPION 1961 YANKEES isn't a boast - they earned it, beating the Cincinnati Reds four games to one that October. That's the club this whole sheet is built around: Roger Maris hit sixty-one home runs to break Babe Ruth's thirty-four-year-old record of sixty, with Mantle chasing him to fifty-four before an injury slowed him down. Whitey Ford was the best pitcher in the game that year, twenty-five wins against four losses, the Cy Young Award, and World Series MVP on top of it after two shutout wins. Elston Howard, who had broken the Yankees' color line back in 1955, was an everyday piece of that club by then, and Ralph Houk, painted here too, won it all in his very first season as manager. That's a lot of history for one grid of paintings to be carrying.

🔍 Condition

Unused and uncut. The back is plain and unprinted. Thirty-six Yankees, one uncut sheet: Maris, Mantle, Ford, Howard, Houk and the rest of the 1961 club, side by side.