James A. Hartzell, a retired Sun artist who drew the first Baltimore Oriole cartoon logo for the baseball team and made it a front-page fixture of the newspaper for more than a decade, died Monday of an infection at a hospital in Williamsburg, Va., while traveling with the Towson University baseball team. The Towson resident would have been 94 next week.
"Growing up in Baltimore as an Orioles fan, you knew to rely on the front page of The Sun," said Mike Gibbons, the Babe Ruth Museum's director. "You didn't need to see the score. Jim's cartoon was the first thing you looked at. It would tell you everything you needed to know about the game."
Born in Baltimore and raised near Druid Hill Park, Mr. Hartzell grew up playing baseball there. After attending Polytechnic Institute, he refined his artistic skills as a student at the Maryland Institute College of Art. He also sketched with the Charcoal Club.
A Baltimore & Ohio Railroad advertising artist in the 1920s -- when he used his employee rail pass to attend New York Yankees games -- he was attired as a Confederate soldier on a Fair of the Iron Horse float in 1927.
He joined the Sunday Sun on May 12, 1930, but after three years was laid off during the Depression. After a stint at the old Washington Times Herald, he returned to The Sun in 1934 -- and remained for 45 years.
Mr. Hartzell drew his first cartoon Oriole for the franchise owners as the major league team arrived in Baltimore in 1954. His bird, and successors that evolved, were reproduced on ashtrays, cigarette lighters, lamps, admission tickets, pennants and uniform caps. Mr. Hartzell's Orioles drawings began a 12-year stand in the newspaper April 12, 1967, as the Orioles defeated Minnesota, 6-3, in the home opener.
"This feathered friend of Mr. Hartzell and countless thousands of Oriole baseball fans was a feature of The Sun's front page during the baseball season and was looked on as eagerly as the daily weather forecast," said an article on the artist's 1979 retirement.
"A joyous bird at the bottom of Page 1 and you knew the Orioles had won last night's game. A bird about to jump off the end of a dock, a weight attached to his feathers, and you knew the game hadn't gone well," said Orioles historian James H. Bready, a retired Evening Sun book editor and editorial writer. "All his drawings on Page 1 were done with a wonderful whimsy. He could talk fiercely but he drew gently."
