In April, Main & Mill Brewing Co. raised its label art game with the release of its first series of cans honoring and celebrating the Negro Leagues and its players. The first series featured four images of the legendary Satchel Paige honoring the 5oth anniversary of his induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973. The series features a new American style Pilsner, accompanied by artwork created by Graig Kreindler with 20% of the proceeds going towards the Negro League Baseball Museum.
Now, the next series of cans has been released celebrating those inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2022 as well as Paige. This four-pack features four different paintings, one each of Buck OâNeil, Minnie Minoso, Bud Fowler, and Satchel Paige, all created by Kreindler.
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As a further nod to the nostalgic days of baseball card collecting that we know and love, each can release in this series will continue to be sequentially numbered (this 4-PACK contains NLCS 002, #005 â #008).
“In addition, starting with this series we are randomly inserting individually numbered refractor labels into four packs (to 500)!!!! Once these cans are gone, theyâre gone,” said Main & Mill owner Denny Foster. “You can find these at our brewpub, our online shop and throughout Missouri (starting this week) thanks to our distribution partner @craftrepublicstl.”
The backstory of the series
âAbout a year ago, I had the idea of working with world-renowned artist Graig Kreindlerâs and sent him a random email detailing an idea that would work around licensing his paintings/color studies of Negro League baseball players in a way to raise money for the Negro League Baseball Museum and playersâ families,â said Foster.
Kreindler, known as âThe Painter Of The National Pastime,â is an award-winning artist whose sports work has appeared in juried shows and museums across the United States, and has been featured in nationally-distributed books, newspapers, magazines, on the Internet, and television. His âNegro Leagues Projectâ is a celebration of the 100 years since the Negro National League was formed. Kreindler created 235 color studies of various well-known and unsung Negro and Latin American League players.
âKreindler was interested and got me in touch with Jay Caldwell who runs negroleagueshistory.com and has been actively involved in promoting the league, its players, and the history,â said Foster. âWith Jay involved, we started fleshing out the idea further and ended up making the idea a reality over the last 10 months.â
The Negro Leagues Celebration Series
These releases will continue twice per year with new paintings, players, and information continually building a collectible set over the course of the next 15+ years Main and Mill continue to utilize Graig Kreindlerâs amazing paintings. Each label is numbered as part of a nod to the nostalgia of baseball card collecting.
âWe plan to sell this series in cans only, including at bars, to ensure everyone gets the chance to see the incredible art and read about each player as theyâre released,â said Foster.
