Nick Castellanos Gets a Helping Hand From Jean-Michel Basquiat

The Phillies outfielder sports custom-made batting gloves featuring artwork of the late, great American painter, and they’ve been put to good use this postseason.

Before he was a Phillies superstar, delighting Philadelphians with near-nightly home runs, highlight-reel catches and surprising answers to questions as the team fights for a second straight pennant, Nick Castellanos was a tourist wandering the streets of Paris in January 2020 with his now wife, Jess. They stepped into a bookstore and happened upon a 75-page book about the life of American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Castellanos was intrigued. “I’m just a fan of his,” he says, adding that he likes “his work and his story.”

Basquiat resided mostly in the back of his mind until this summer, when Castellanos decided his simple, white batting gloves were a little boring. So he texted Kevin Schneider, whose company, Emery Glove Co., makes his fielding glove and batting gloves. (Emery is owned by Chandler Bats, which makes Castellanos’s bats.) Castellanos wanted to try something a little different, he said.

“The material on the back of the hand,” he wrote. “I’m thinking some Jean-Michel Basquiat.”

He didn’t have to tell Schneider twice. “F--- yeah,” Schneider responded.

Credit: Kevin Schneider

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Credit: Kevin Schneider

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Credit: Kevin Schneider

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Credit: Kevin Schneider

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Castellanos sent along images of five paintings he thought “looked cool,” he says, and Schneider transferred them onto the gloves, along with “Liam” on one hand and “Otto” on the other, for Castellanos’s two sons, in 10-year-old Liam’s handwriting.

“The goal was to have it be—I don’t want to say subtle, but a little bit subtle,” says Schneider. “Someone would not know what it was, and if they did know the work, [they’d say], ‘I think that’s … ’”

Schneider also tweaked each image slightly so they would not be straight copies of Basquiat’s work. “I wouldn’t want to offend anyone or have something come up where you end up in a lawsuit just because an MLB player is trying to do something cool because it’s something that he loves,” he says.

So far Castellanos has made more news for what he’s done with the Basquiatting gloves than for what’s on them. In Game 1 of the National League Wild Card Series against the Marlins, he hit a double and then flashed his ring finger at his dugout, symbolizing the championship jewelry the Phillies are chasing. (Many people—including some Phillies—briefly thought he was flipping the bird. “Why would I give the middle finger to my teammates?” he said after the game. “I love them.” But he also enjoyed the reaction, texting Schneider, “How’s that for a batting glove advertisement?”) Castellanos then slugged two home runs in consecutive games in the Division Series to become the first player in postseason history with two dingers in two straight games.

With a raise of his ring finger, Castellanos elevated interest in his unique batting gloves :: Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports

Overall, he’s been very happy with them, in part for the story they tell. When he read that book in Paris, Castellanos enjoyed learning about how a teenage Basquiat, selling handmade postcards on the street for $1 apiece, spotted Andy Warhol in a restaurant and introduced himself. Warhol bought two postcards; they met again a few years later and became good friends. Castellanos is also interested in Basquiat’s relationship with Madonna, whom he dated for a few months in the early 1980s while she was working on her eponymous debut album and he was just becoming famous. (When they broke up, Madonna has said, Basquiat made her give back all the works he had made her and painted over them black. After he died at 27 of a heroin overdose, she sponsored his first retrospective.)

“I don't know this, but I think that a lot of like Madonna's craziness [she] got from him,” Castellanos says. “And then I just theorized that a little bit of Madonna bled into Dennis Rodman [whom she dated in 1994]. You know what I’m saying? These are just little things that I connect in my head.”

There are also baseball connections: Basquiat grew up in New York and was fascinated by the place of sports in American, and Black, life. As a young man, he and a friend, Jennifer Stein, made a series of baseball cards with the players’ faces painted over and words written below; two years later, in 1981, he painted a portrait of Jackie Robinson. That work sold in 2019 for $4.87 million. (At the same auction, Alex Rodriguez sold his own Basquiat, Pink Elephant with Fire Engine, for $3.36 million.)

Castellanos is not an expert, although he is a fan of art in general. Earlier this season, when the Phillies traveled to Denver, he took DH Kyle Schwarber to a psychedelic art exhibit called Meow Wolf. ("Not my thing," Schwarber told Fox Sports.) Castellanos says he hasn’t decided whether he will add any other artists to his batting glove collection, and Schneider says they are not for sale. They’re one of one—just like Castellanos.