2008 MLB Boston Red Sox ⚾ Dunkin' Poster, Together We Triumph, Pedroia, Youkilis!

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

🏆 Volunteer Today! Together We Triumph!

This is a 2008 promotional poster from the same "Join the Ranks" series Dunkin' Donuts ran with the Red Sox and Major League Baseball that year, officially licensed by MLB and the players' union, with a numbered hologram sticker on the front to prove it. Youkilis, Pedroia, Okajima and Papelbon stand in their home whites against a red sunburst, three of them holding open championship ring boxes and Youkilis holding a ring up — a picture straight out of April 8, 2008, when the Red Sox handed out their 2007 World Series rings at the Fenway home opener. "TOGETHER WE TRIUMPH!" wraps the Red Sox hanging-socks logo below them, "JOIN THE RANKS" underneath that. As any true New Englander knows, the Red Sox and Dunkin' Donuts are an inseparable duo, as iconic as peanut butter and jelly.

🎨 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 — exactly why this series carries recruiting-poster lines like "Join the Ranks" and "Volunteer Today," with sibling designs titled "Steadfast and Strong" and "Combat Tested." 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.

⚾ The Four

Dustin Pedroia was the American League's 2007 Rookie of the Year and its 2008 MVP the very next season — one of only three players ever to pull off that back-to-back double. Kevin Youkilis, Michael Lewis's "Greek God of Walks" in Moneyball, played 135 errorless games at first base for a 2007 Gold Glove and finished third in that 2008 MVP vote himself. Hideki Okajima, a Kyoto-born left-hander in his rookie season as Boston's setup man, got there on the strength of the fans' own ballot — they voted him onto the 2007 All-Star team. And Jonathan Papelbon, the Red Sox' all-time saves leader, closed out that 2007 World Series sweep of Colorado with three saves of his own.

🍩 Dunkin' and the Sox

Dunkin' printed about five million of these posters for its New England stores in 2008, one design in a small series that ran that year — this one, "Steadfast and Strong," "Combat Tested" and "Guns of October" among them. The footer carries the whole paper trail: BD&A, 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.

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