Pop Fly Pop Shop

06/07/2026

I kept coming back to that smile.

Not the call. Not the controversy. Not the replay. The smile. It always struck me as just so incredible odd.

I've probably spent more time thinking about Armando Galarraga's reaction than the missed call itself. Actually, I know I have. Everything had just changed for the guy. A perfect game was gone. And somehow there was this grin. Not because he was happy. Not because he approved of what happened. Just this flash of perspective in the middle of a moment that would've broken most of us.

Then Jim Joyce did something just as remarkable. He owned it. Immediately. Publicly. Completely. Both men with knee-jerk flashes of character...and both were beautiful.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized the story isn't really about a blown call. It's about character. Two people finding themselves in an impossible (AND ABSURD!) situation and somehow responding with a level of grace that still feels rare all these years later.

A perfect game would've been historic. What actually happened became human. And maybe that's why it has lasted. Not because it was perfect, but because it absolutely wasn't. Because for a brief moment, everyone involved seemed to understand that some things are bigger than a game tally, bigger than a record book, and even bigger than being right.

That's why we're still talking about it. That's why we all just observed the 16th anniversary of this game just a few days ago.

This week's Pop Fly release is my attempt to capture that feeling. Laughing at the absurd, embracing the human element.

06/07/2026

RYNO has officially retired.

Thank you to everyone who picked one up this week. Every release is a leap of faith on my end, and I'm grateful to each of you who continue to trust me with your walls, your collections, and your memories.

A special welcome as well to all of the new followers who found Pop Fly through this release. There are a lot of places to spend your attention these days, and I'm honored you've chosen to spend a little of it here.

For those who are new, Pop Fly has never really been about prints. It's about stories. The stories behind the players, the games, the moments, and the memories that made us baseball fans in the first place.

If you haven't already, be sure to follow along on all of the @ popflypopshop channels. And if you really want to go down the rabbit hole, come join what might be the best-kept secret in Pop Fly collecting: the Pop Fly Collecting Community on Facebook.

It's where collectors share their collections, trade stories, help newcomers, and occasionally know things before everyone else.

Thank you again for another great week.

On to the next one.

06/06/2026

Somewhere along the way, baseball figured out how to make ordinary summer nights feel bigger than they really are. A wax pack in your pocket. A ballgame under the lights. A face you recognize from a movie you haven't seen in years but somehow still know by heart.

Tonight, the will be handing out packs featuring six trading cards created for the team. They're exclusive to the Tower Buzzers, wrapped in old-school wax, and available to the first 1,500 fans through the gate. For the little ones, it'll be magical. For us older ones; a time machine.

I'll be wandering around the ballpark as well with a few Pop Fly Season 1 minis tucked away for anyone who happens to ask. Some of the old stuff. The hard-to-find stuff.

That's all.

Just one of those summer baseball nights.
ONT FIELD. 6:30. Be in your seats by 5:20 tho!

PS - there IS a chase card, "The Helpers", with only 50 made. Good luck!

06/03/2026

The story behind Pop Fly is much more than just the artists’ journey. This is a family effort - father son and the mother/wife/businesswoman who holds it all together.

When it comes to creativity, Dr. Areni Arslanian means business Based in Ventura, California, organizational psychologist Areni Arslanian is well versed

05/31/2026

Pop Fly #244: "Ryno"

One of the strange things about being a kid is that you don't know what you're supposed to appreciate. You just know what feels normal.

Ryne Sandberg felt normal. Every year he was there. Every year he'd make the All-Star team. Every year he'd make some ridiculous play at second base and somehow act like it wasn't a big deal.

As a kiddo, I don't think I realized how unusual that was. I just assumed that's what baseball looked like. Then enough years go by and you start realizing that players like that don't come around very often.

The older I get, the more I appreciate players who didn't need a nickname, a bat flip, a controversy, or a singular moment in the spotlight but rather just showed up and did the job better than almost anybody else did.

Today's piece is for one of those guys.

RYNO.

05/31/2026

Bobby Cox has retired.
Thank you to everyone who supported this one. One of the more interesting things about this release happened near the finish line. I had a full-color version nearly complete when I accidentally stripped almost all of the color away. When I later shared both versions, many of you preferred the color version. Truthfully, I get it.

If you're only looking at this piece by itself, I can absolutely see why. But my view is a little different. More than 240 releases into this project, I'm not just thinking about whether a piece works. I'm thinking about whether it surprises me. Whether it pushes me somewhere I haven't been before. Whether it makes me stop, tilt my head, and think, "Hmmm..." The limited-palette version did that. It felt older. Stranger. It resonated with me & felt different from the rest. So that's the version I trusted.

Thank you to everyone who trusted me too.
One of the greatest gifts an artist can receive is a community willing to follow him into unfamiliar territory. Whether you agreed with the choice or not, I'm grateful for the conversation, the debate, and the trust.

And most of all, thank you for helping me honor Bobby Cox!

05/24/2026

This week's Pop Fly, #242: "Bobby Cox"

Bobby Cox’s legacy isn’t about numbers it's about the culture he created. As Atlanta’s manager, he built a clubhouse where professionalism and trust came first. Players talk about how he always had their backs and treated them like family. He spotted talent, nurtured it and demanded excellence, turning the Braves into a perennial contender. This week’s release celebrates the leader who cared too much to walk away, whose standards still guide Atlanta today.

Each Pop Fly release is created as a reimagined comic-book cover, blending baseball history, folklore, and nostalgia into a collectible art print. Printed in limited quantities for one week only, each piece is hand signed and numbered by artist Daniel Jacob Horine and packaged with collectible ephemera inspired by the experience of digging through comics and baseball cards as a kid.

05/24/2026

“I Shot Eddie Waitkus!” has officially retired.
This one was a strange trip from beginning to end.
The deeper I dug into the real story, the less it felt like a baseball piece and the more it felt like some forgotten American noir nightmare that just happened to orbit baseball. It definitely lives in the stranger corner of Pop Fly alongside pieces. Those ones maybe aren’t the loudest immediately, but tend to linger.

Thank you to everyone who picked this bizarre thing up and went down the rabbit hole with me last week!