You usually can’t judge a book by its cover. But in Chili Dog MVP: Dick Allen, the 1972 White Sox and a Transforming Chicago, the cover sums it all up. Only a few artists in the world could capture the spirit of a book like Todd Radom, who let his imagination run with his take on the iconic 1972 Sports Illustrated photo of Dick Allen juggling baseballs while puffing on a cigarette in the Comiskey Park home dugout.
Key characters of Chili Dog MVP surround Radom’s period-piece cover: Harry Caray just starting out in Chicago, an angry Mayor Daley who sees his power slipping while his beloved White Sox contend for the AL pennant, a youthful, energetic Nancy Faust who would invent walk-up music, and the iconic Sox pitcher Wilbur Wood who represented everyman for the City of Chicago.
We expected nothing less of Todd, who has been assigned many Major League Baseball artistic projects through the decades. One of his most prominent was the 1919-vintage White Sox uniform worn by the team in the wildly entertaining Field of Dreams Game in Iowa on Aug. 12, 2021. We see other projects similar to this book coming from our team of authors and editors, and thus we likely have not seen the last of Radom’s cover majesty.
Find out more about Todd Radom at https://www.ToddRadom.com/about
Blessing your timeline with Dick Allen smoking while juggling baseballs #VintageSox pic.twitter.com/TY49I59E3W
— Sox On Tap (@SoxOnTap) October 24, 2020
