Kids who collected Topps baseball cards into the 1970s could flip them over for a bonus: tiny cartoons of a base-stealing player scooping up bases under his arm or some other silly sight gag.

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette photos A series of new Topps baseball cards will feature baseball trivia illustrated by Dave Coulson's cartoons. Click photo for larger image.

Those primitive cartoons not only delighted little boys. They helped Topps deal with reproduction problems of the grainy gray card backs. A photo or statistics would bleed on the surface, but a cartoon would show up fine.

Today, the cards are printed on high-quality cardboard. But Topps has brought back the cartoons to help entice kids to baseball card collecting and create some nostalgia.

And although his name is not on the cards, Pittsburgh cartoonist David Coulson dreamed up the 300 cartoons -- perhaps fitting on this baseball-crazy day in Pittsburgh.

The soft-spoken 49-year-old artist won't be at today's All-Star Game, however. He couldn't get tickets.

But he was at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh on Saturday, autographing baseball cards with his mark on them -- tiny cartoons of Pirate Matt Capps pitching and other players in action.

A father, who looked like he was in his 40s, paid him the ultimate compliment: The cartoons looked exactly like the ones from his childhood.

Cartoonist David Coulson works out of a studio in his Swisshelm Park home. Click photo for larger image.

Most days, Coulson can be found sketching inside the studio of his Swisshelm Park home, whipping up a new batch of cartoons for upcoming Topps cards or drawing for other clients.

"I do cartoons for pretty much anyone who calls me and pays me," he said.

The freelancer has been working for Topps since 1982. "They have a long history of supporting cartoonists," especially the dying breed of sports cartoonists.

He points to his sketches for the next batch of Topps cards, corresponding to captions the company sent him.

A man in a baseball uniform is wearing a Santa Claus hat and beard and holding a sack of toys. "The only manager who was born Christmas Day was Gene Lamont."

Another sketch shows a player running with eight home plates in hand. "In 1912 Ty Cobb stole home a record eight times."

The bottom lip of the player's face juts out, lantern-style, giving it an old-style feeling. Coulson was instructed not to do specific features of players.

That contrasts with the caricatures he did for Bazooka Baseball cards during the past four years. Those multi-panel cartoons, printed on translucent paper, look like Bazooka Joe comic strips. One 2005 card shows Pirates pitcher Oliver Perez blowing a pitch past a batter. The quote box of the bewildered batter said, "What was that?" "Oliver's Twist" the catcher answers.

"David's style is very clean, and it's fun," said Don Alan Zakrzewski, art director for Topps.

Cartoons are one way the sports card company is trying to win back kids, who are not collecting cards as they once did.

In the era of video games, DVDs and home theaters, "It is much harder for kids to get excited about holding a little piece of cardboard with the players' photos on it when they can tune into ESPN," Zakrzewski said. "We try to give them something that television can't offer, something they can hold in their hands and touch."

Coulson has illustrated the box for Heritage old-style baseball cards and created cartoons for Bazooka's football and basketball cards.

He is also a candy cartoonist. He illustrated the box for Topps' Dirty Laundry candy in 1984, the kitschy candy shaped like socks and clothes, tumbling out of a tiny washer and dryer. The box illustrations for Thumb Sucker and Boom Box candies were also his creations.

His kid-friendly cartoons are a contrast to the more sophisticated cartoons he has done for Forbes magazine and The Wall Street Journal.

As a child growing up in California, he was more into comics than baseball cards. By junior high school, he was printing an underground comic book. He attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and has been inspired by everyone from Robert Crumb, the subversive underground cartoonist, to beloved children's illustrator Richard Scarry.

His living room is almost like a family art gallery. A watercolor Coulson painted of Alfred E. Neuman, the "What, Me Worry?" poster boy, hangs across the wall from a painting of a rhinoceros by his 19-year-old son Bud. Nearby are paintings by his sister, Gayle, and his great-grandfather Emil, a Hungarian immigrant who was a church muralist. His wife, Wendy Bennett, is an art conservator who restores works of art on paper.

The couple's three children have all dabbled in drawing, and they like to peek inside their father's studio.

"It's pretty cool," says Hill, his 13-year-old son, who no longer collects baseball cards. "Kids everywhere are getting baseball cards, and he is the one drawing them."