John R. Deecken

John R. Deecken is a freelance artist from Connecticut — an outsider to the U.S. Mint, which is exactly what makes his story unusual.

For most of the 20th century, U.S. coins were designed by the Mint's own staff or by a short list of invited sculptors. The 1992 Olympic coins broke that pattern. To mark the Games in Barcelona and Albertville, the Treasury Department ran an open, nationwide design competition in 1991 and drew roughly 1,107 entries from artists across the country. Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady, sitting with a panel of Olympic athletes, chose the winners on October 1, 1991.

Deecken's drawing won the silver dollar. The contest split the three coins among three different outsiders — a gymnast for the half dollar, a sprinter for the gold $5 — and Deecken's piece of the project was the obverse — the heads side — of the 1992 Olympic Baseball Dollar.

Little is published about his life in the numismatic press. By his own account on his artist profile, he is a "lifelong self-taught local artist" based in Connecticut with decades of professional experience, who earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Connecticut in 1983. Numismatic sources of the day placed him in Fairfield, Connecticut; he is later associated with neighboring Bridgeport. Beyond the Olympic dollar, he left little trail in coins. He is remembered for one design — and for the argument it started.

Deecken's obverse is pure motion: a pitcher reared back at the top of his windup, about to fire the ball toward home plate, with the five Olympic rings and "USA" set behind him. It is one of the most dynamic figures on any modern U.S. coin — a single athlete frozen at the instant before release.

That energy is also what got it noticed. In its March 31, 1992 issue, Numismatic News pointed out a striking resemblance between the coin's pitcher and a 1991 Fleer baseball card showing Nolan Ryan mid-delivery. Side by side, the two looked nearly identical. Because Ryan was a living, active superstar — and U.S. coins are not supposed to depict living people — the likeness raised an awkward question for federal money: had the Mint, in effect, put a specific player on legal tender without his say-so? The nickname "Nolan Ryan dollar" stuck, and the coin became an instant collectible.

Deecken's answer was that the pitcher was no one in particular. "It wasn't intended to be him," he told Coin World in 1992. "I looked at a number of pitchers, including Ryan, Whitey Ford and other people and arrived at what you see on the coin." A composite, in other words — an artist's blend of several deliveries into one ideal windup. When reporters first asked at the October 1991 unveiling, he gave the same answer: a composite, not any one person.

As is standard for U.S. coins, a Mint sculptor-engraver translated Deecken's flat drawing into the three-dimensional relief — the raised and recessed surface — that a die could strike. That work was done by Chester Y. Martin, a longtime Mint sculptor-engraver. The reverse, with its Union shield, olive branches, stars and stripes and the Olympic rings, was the work of a different and far more established artist, the sculptor Marcel Jovine.

There's a quieter footnote, too. The uncirculated 1992-D dollar carries lettering on its edge — "XXV OLYMPIAD" repeated around the rim — a flourish the Mint had not used on a U.S. coin since the 1933 Saint-Gaudens double eagle. Deecken's pitcher got the headlines; the coin it sat on was a small technical revival.