2008 MLB Boston Red Sox ⚾ Dunkin' Poster, Steadfast and Strong, Jonathan Papelbon!

Size: 20 x 16 inches ~ Little to no wear, and it ships professionally in a tube. They vary a little one to the next.

🏆 Steadfast and Strong

This is a 2008 promotional poster of Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon, part of a "Join the Ranks" series that Dunkin' Donuts ran with Major League Baseball that year - officially licensed by MLB and the players' union, with a numbered hologram sticker on the front to prove it. Papelbon stands in his Red Sox whites against a sunburst of blue and lilac, "STEADFAST AND STRONG" stenciled across the top in the same wartime-recruitment-poster style the whole series borrows from.

🎨 The Artist

The art is by Chris Speakman, a Somerville, Massachusetts illustrator who ran his own line of licensed sports art under the name Sports Propaganda. He's described his own baseball work as "reminiscent of pop and poster art from wartime, World War Two" - which is exactly why this series is called "Join the Ranks," with sibling designs titled "Combat Tested" and "Guns of October." His work has run in The Boston Globe, on ESPN.com and CBS Boston, and he designed the program cover for the 2011 MLB All-Star Game. Dunkin' hired him for this poster promotion in 2008; Topps brought him on the following year as a featured artist for its 2009 baseball and UFC card sets.

⚾ Jonathan Papelbon

Papelbon closed for the Red Sox through their 2007 World Series sweep of Colorado, picking up three saves in that Series alone, and made four straight All-Star teams from 2006 to 2009. He's the franchise's all-time saves leader, and Red Sox fans still bring up the Irish jig he danced on the mound to the Dropkick Murphys after clinching the '07 AL East and ALCS.

🍩 Dunkin' and the Sox

Dunkin' printed about five million of these posters for its New England stores in 2008, part of the promotion it ran with the Red Sox and MLB. The footer carries the whole paper trail: BD&A - Bensussen Deutsch & Associates, the promotional agency behind a lot of MLB giveaway merchandise - alongside DD IP Holder LLC, the company that holds the Dunkin' Donuts trademarks, and the MLBPA "Players Choice" mark. "Steadfast and Strong" was one design in a small series that ran together that year; sibling posters carried footer panels reading "Camaraderie" and "Resolve."

Ready to frame or roll back up in its tube - a real piece of 2008 Red Sox promotional history.