Babe Ruth In The Papers

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This is the photo that is currently on the front page of the Washington Post’s Sunday Metro section:

Before I go any further, let me make sure that I take time to thank the staff at the Gaylord National Hotel inWashington, DC for their tremendous professionalism and attention to every detail. These people are the standard for their industry. I have, in all honesty, never seen such elan in my life. It was a real treat. With the hotel slated to open in a few days, you could ride on the energy of these folks as they readied their jewel of a hotel.

I would also like to thank Michael Hudson of Gaylord Hotels. He is a throwback to a more civil time in America and in business. He is a true gentleman and a visionary in his field. You don’t run into too many people like him and it was my good fortune to have done so. Thanks Michael, for everything.

This is a shot someone took for me with my camera during the installation.

The Babe Ruth statue is now permanently on display at the Gaylord National Hotel & Resort in Washington, DC at the new National Harbor area.

I went down there on Tuesday and stayed until Thursday and The Babe was installed and well received. The Washington Post came by and did a story on the hotel opening and included a fair amount of interest on the statue. I was not sure how much would run on the statue but I was pleased to have folks in Washington DC call and tell me the good news.

The full story of the statue and everything surrounding it is on the Birrerart.com website:

Click here to open the Birrerart.com website up in a new window

Other things that were noteworthy while I was down there was the fact that the Nationals has declared the sportsbar in the Gaylord as the official sportsbar of the team. Because of this, they had sent over the last home plate used at RFK stadium so it could be permanently installed at the entrance to the sportsbar. Here are a few shots of that and the Washington Post getting their story at the time:

That’s Michael Hudson, Director of Brands at Gaylord Hotels, with homeplate from RFK Stadium.

And here is the laying ceremony while the PR folks take photos.

***
The Gaylord National Hotel is so immense that it is difficult to photograph it all in one frame. The atrium that overlooks the Potomac River and Old Alexandria, Virginia, on the opposite bank, is 18 stories high. There is a village of little shops and fountains and trees and restaurants all inside the enclosure. It is so big that you mostly aren’t aware that you are inside.

Here is a view of the upper part of the atrium. These gaslights are 20 feet high. The scale is just hard to fathom.

On the 24th floor, there is a state of the art nightclub and one of the unique features is, believe it or not, the men’s room. Here are the fixtures and the view is outrageous. The Washington Monument can be seen while you are, well…ahem, you know. It’s just one of a myriad of details that make this hotel one of the most amazing in the world.

The Greatest Single Inning of Baseball

Just finished The Glory Of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter. Probably my 3rd reading in 20 years or so. I’m glad I hung on to it.

Life Size Babe Ruth Statue Solid Wood

Just the facts.  He’s almost ready for delivery.  It’s down to touching up and a few hard-to-reach stripes and then deck work really.  Not much.  Maybe 20 hours.  Maybe only 10.  I have to call up some people now and get them to see it before he goes permanently to the Gaylord Hotel in Washington DC.  I understand that the Washington Nationals will be having a shindig there and Babe is sure to cause a stir.  I think the new park down in DC needs a life sized Walter Johnson, of Washington Senators fame.  Or Joel Hanrahan even?  Go Nats! 

Babe Ruth In Satin

Since you liked that one, here’s another. The pile of stuff between his feet is masking tape. Every single pinstripe is the result of two pieces of masking tape. You take 1″ tape and razor blade it down the middle. Then you use the good straight edge to define the outside of one stripe. Repeat for the other. Then you paint the stripe by hand, between the tape, with the Yankee blue acrylic paint. You peel the tape off, and there’s your stripe. I’ve experimented with many other methods: stamping, freehand, rolling. All of them are N/G. This is the best way. As you figured, it is slllloooooowwwww.

Also remember that any sheen on the figure will be removed by overspraying with the top secret window froster. Cloth, and skin for the most part, are flat. Not glossy. Not semi. Not satin.

The edges of the base will be hemmed in 6″ oak planks, which I have just purchased.

 

[There's the Oak on top of the pine and basswood.  You can see the airbrush compressor as well.  In the background is the life size Mickey Mantle statue, awaiting his sprucing up.  Those headphones are fantastic.  They are totally soundproof and also a great am/fm radio.] 

The deck will be coated with a thing called “Turface”. Turface is the stuff that sometimes is referred to as “diamond dry”. It is kiln fired clay that is ground up. It is very light and granular (think unground pepper kernel size) and apparently absorbs water like a son-of-a-gun, however, I don’t care about it’s water properties; only that it is the cleanest “dirt” that I can find that also looks realistic.

Bactine for Babe

Another in the Babe series.  Here is proof that I can shift gears a little.  There was too much meat on the shoulder so out come the 1/4″ die grinders and belt sanders and off comes some shoulder.  It feels weird because the thing is mostly done back there and then I’m taking a step back to get something right.  That’s why I like to start striping up finished areas because that helps you see the right things.  Things that you wouldn’t see in wood or primer will become more apparent.  Remeber my mantra: do the easy stuff first and then the hard stuff becomes easy.

Yes, you are seeing the hands on the big guy now.  That’s as of 1am yesterday morning and now the job is to get them looking right, sanded and sealed.  Tonight was more of that and today was a really light day for a Saturday because of the stuff I talked about in the last post.  Too much family stuff going on to do much but I did force myself down there to get a coat on because when dry time is in play, you have to take advantage of the time.  Tomorrow has to be a big day.  I was hoping to be past this point by this time but you do what you can do.

And the Andy Griffith 4-pack was disappointing.  Two of them were on last night.  So I watched Antiques Roadshow.  Roadshow is a good program to work to because I don’t have to look at the screen really at all.  I can just listen to what the appraisers say and the laymen jabber and I’m ok.  If the piece is stunning, I can quickly glance and then get my eyes back to the end of the die grinder or what have you.

I have a little FM base station plugged into the TV and I wear wireless headphones to pick up the sound.  It’s great because they block the sound of the machines and act as noise dampers (that I would have to wear anyway) and with a little flick, I can mute all the dopey ads–every *** **** one of them.  Did you ever really stop and listen to how they scream and yell at you and insult your intelligence in just about any TV commercial you can name?  It’s really amazing when you think about it.  And movie trailers?  Don’t get me started.  Why does EVERYthing in a movie trailer have to WHOOOOSH and BOOOM at you like you have your ear on the subway track at rush hour?  Do they think we are monkeys?  It’s just raw f****n noise people!  I don’t know about you all, but if an ad is obnoxious enough, I will avoid buying it within reason.  –fog 

Holiday Cheer Everywhere. Even My Lungs.

My kid keeps breaking out of his swaddle blanket.  The kid is like Houdini~  He gets a hand out of the little swaddle blanket (which looks an awful lot like a tiny straight jacket) pretty much before you get the light out.  And he likes it.  He gets a little thrill out of it. 

Just when I thought the dust phase of the statue was over, I got a full 8 hours of it today, a vacation day, no less.  The hands are on and I’ll be posting out some photos of that this w/e.  And I do wear a mask when the dust is flying but it can be darned uncomfortable.

Tomorrow, I need to have another big day with the work on the statue but will be shoveling frozen ice off a driveway (still doing that) and taking my nephew to his hitting workout as his dad is in dialysis.  Then after hitting, we are working out the kids for tryouts for the last 2 slots and we have ringers coming in who should be good; but we have to go through the whole thing.  Then we take the boy to get measured for a custom baseball glove.  They measure his hand and build it to suit.  It is quite cheap on a deal that the coach has arranged, so I’m all over it.  He may get 3 years out of this glove.

Then it’s over to the nursing home that my dad is in now with the broken hip.  He was released from the hospital and is there for rehab.  I was a little p****d to find out that this place charges.  Where I work, if someone is on a full Medicare A stay, the first 20 days of your 100 days are free in essence, because you are collecting 100% from Med-A.  Whatever that person’s RUG score is, THAT’S what they pay the facility.  Well, at least this place is close and that money could be an incentive to get the walking in and get out.  He will most likely be there for Xmas but it still may only be for 4, 5, or 6 days.  All in all, for his age, he has come through remarkably well.

After all this stuff, I will be able to work.  Maybe get in a 6pm to 1am shift.  That’s when I get all my work done anyway.  At least there’s an Andy Griffith 4-pack on at 8pm.  2 hours of Mayberry.  I want to live in Mayberry.  There isn’t much to watch on TV when I’m trapped in the shop.  Why isn’t there more pool on TV?  I love it.  All I see is poker: Where’s the pool?  And when it is pool, it’s always 9-ball.  How about some Rotation (Chicago) or one pocket or something other than 9-ball?  And when they show you the table with the ball diagrams on there, can they show that more?  I mean longer?  So I have a chance to map out 3 or 4 shots ahead?  That’s the whole game and they rush it but boy, they make sure they have the stupid, “pocket cam”.  That is a little camera that gives the view of an ant, standing in the pocket as the ball comes AT you.  Now why in the hell would you EVER want that vantage point?  I wouldn’t mind seeing the whole match from above the table.

Also today, I bought 100 shares of YUM and now I’m hoping that those guys can sell a lot of our bad food (and lifestyle) to the Chinese.  They have some dough in their pockets now so naturally, they’re going to want jalapeno poppers, doesn’t everyone?  And I will profit like Cheney….[evil laugh]. 

Last item.  See the photo below?

This is my tax money being spent on town, curbside, leaf collection.  Yea, that’s how they do it here and you don’t have a choice.  I rake my stuff to the curb on a busy county road and the cars and wind blow it all the hell all over the place.  I re-rake it daily for a couple of weeks and then these guys come around and vaccuum them up.

Only here, this year, they can’t vaccuum up my neighbor Bill’s leaves because the da*n things are frozen~  So there were as many as 4 guys hacking away at Bill’s leaves with shovels and backing up traffic for 10 minutes.  The pile on the right?  That’s the ice from my driveway.  The leaves are behind Bill’s blow-fence.  Unsure if the blow fence is helping the leave-entropy.  They might be because Bill is the only one on the street with any leaves at all.  The mayor wants us to know that the system is working and can he please raise our taxes? Again.

Relativity

My nephew and I hit tonight with the coach and his kids at the indoor facility.  I pointed out one of the staff and said to him, “…hey, that guy’s father hit a homerun for the Yankees that won the 1976 pennant…”  And he said “really?”, and the usual discussion ensued.  He didn’t know who he was.  And that homer was BIG.  I remember it as a kid.  I was at a sleepover that night.  I hated the Yankees but it was just a big event.  Everyone was in an uproar about it.  And then the Big Red Machine blew them off the field in 4.

Anyway, I thought about it and the fact that he didn’t know the player.  And then I realized.  I’m old.  He was born in 1999 and this was 1976.  That would be like my uncle telling me, “hey, there’s Dolph Camili’s kid!  He was the 1941 MVP for the Dodgers…” –fog 

Is it THAT bad?

Mrs. Pinetar hates the 1903 Gunner’s Coat.  Just hates it.  And I have found that it elicits strong comments both good and bad.  Not only that, but men seem to like it and women seem to mock it.  Just the other day, one of the nurse managers asked me, “…what’s up with the ZZ Top coat?”  The photo doesn’t render the color properly; it runs a lot more yellow than it looks.  But it’s a nice old-timey canvas that already looks a bit seasoned.  What’s not to like?  Help me out here.

***

McBean; I may not be going to LA and now it looks dead.  I would have needed to rope someone into going and that isn’t looking likely.  Now I find that it is more and more likely that I would go to Orlando myself in July with a kids baseball team in a tournament.  It’s not a done deal but likely.  So now, as anti-Disney as I am, I am facing up to the fact that I might be there nevertheless.

***

One last item on the steroids thing.  No one is talking of the corollary to the story and that is the owners complicity in this.  They knew and LOVED the homers flying out at softball rates.  They didn’t care if a guy’s liver exploded.  Oh, they care now, but only because they are worried about Congress and that anti-trust exemption that makes it all go.

During the roid era, they livened the ball several times.  I do not, for the life of me, understand why that is so hard to prove.  You drop the balls from a known height, say 30 feet.  And you record how high up they bounce.  This was done in 1942 by baseball to determine that the new synthetic rubber (the Japanese stopped the rubber trade to USA for war) was not as resilient as real rubber.  In 1942, the offense was down 25% and it hurt them at the gate.

They used the simple drop test on a batch of 1941 balls and the new ones and made a quick determination that led to the official livening of the ball back up to pre-war standards.  If they could do this simple thing 70 years ago, why aren’t they doing it every year?

If they did, I think they’d have “caught” MLB livening up the ball in 1987 for sure and a few times in the 1990’s to fuel the McGuire/Sosa/Bonds ridiculous homer tears.

My point is (1) The owners knew and contributed to it to enhance it and (2) we’re dopes because we could have easily busted them on the ball end of it.

–ofg 

Washington: First In War, First In Peace…ahead of the Wilpons

Since we were looking at the new parks that will be built in the next 5 years: Mets, Yanks, Twins, Oakland A’s, Tampa Bay Rays, Washington. In Washington’s case, they are open in April and here it is. It has the split upper deck that works so well in the newest yards like Philly and St. Louis but something about the joint leaves me thinking, “this is it?”

I mean, it’s nice, don’t get me wrong, but it lacks some character or defining attribute. My first reaction was, “why don’t they point it at the Potomac?”, but I know the answer to that. Major League diamonds are designed to be oriented so that the sun sets over the 3rd base stands. That’s because way, way back when, it was thought that there were fewer lefties and thus there’d be fewer fly balls to RF than LF. (Lefties are 10% of the population). The “Sun Field” is Right Field just about everywhere (except in domes). Even Babe Ruth was moved out of the sun field to protect his hung over assets.

Click here to open a graph of ballpark orientations in a new window

So if you have this plot of land on the banks of the Potomac, and you want to point the park AT the Potomac, you’d have to pretty much face it away from the setting sun, and they can’t do that. This is the same deal in Cincinnati, where they aim the park at the Ohio River and not the downtown skyline. ***

When you talk about orientation, you have to look at Shea. The wind at Shea is cold and blows very hard. If you go to a night game at Shea, even in the Summer, bring a jacket or a couple of sweatshirts because Shea is on a bay and it gets windy and cold. The wind blows from top to bottom in this diagram. I sat in the top row of the upper deck for the Beltran-homer-off-the-scoreboard game against Weaver in the 2006 playoffs (It was Game 2 on the ticket, but since Game 1 was a rainout, it was Game 1). The top row of Shea in late October, on the windy 3rd base side is un-f****n-believably cold and windy. I was sick for weeks after that game. With the little roof over our head and the grate behind us in that top row there, it was like we were in a big, giant harmonica.

So the new Mets yard is pointed more or less AT the wind. And the left field stands jut out and probably block some of it down the left field line but the center and right center areas are, I predict, NOT going to be kind to power hitters on these nights. Day game (there are a few) and you’re fine. Night game early, and you’re fine. 6th inning on 10pm+ and balls will not carry to Right and Right Center. And unless you put this thing in a wind tunnel like Mythbusters, I wouldn’t want to bet that it is good for right handers, either.

This stuff doesn’t stop the Mets brass (Wilpons and marketing people) from getting all lathered up that, [drumroll] “…It looks like Ebbet’s Field from the front”. Everyone: “ooh, ahh”. That’s it. The rest of it isn’t very noteworthy. But it looks like Ebbet’s Field from one angle and that’s why we’re all supposed to praise it. The Wilpons grew up in Brooklyn and Fred played ball with a young Koufax (really, not the made up Larry King story where Koufax claims he never met Larry King), so naturally, the Ebbet’s Field look is the big deal.

It’s a nice, new modern (expensive) ballpark that looks perhaps a bit like Coors in mirror image but it’s IN A PARKING LOT IN QUEENS OUT BY THE AIRPORT people! It’s a dump out there. Willet’s Point is a dump. That part of Queens is a dump. The planes are booming over head and it will never be ANYwhere you want to spend time after a game, ah-la the shangri-la of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. SUCKERS~! Now all bow to the Wilpons; Fred knew Koufax.

***

The last three shots are the New Yankee Stadium or Death Star, home of Hankenstein. Like all the others, it will be new and have all the bells, but it is a newer version of a stadium which is, itself, a newer version of a stadium in which guys like Ruth and Muesel abused lesser teams. The Yankees problem here is that they have to stay true to the old design, more or less, and so, they aren’t really free to do anything else. The park is oriented the same way and is just a block north. Pretty ho hum and as a building full of Yankee fans, isn’t a place I’d like to spend a lot of time anyhow. Yankee fans: The Haarlem Globetrotter fans of baseball.”…you better plug him again, Doc, just to make sure…”

Chips Ahoy! Babe and Tommy

I very rarely get the old chisels out and do any old-timey chiseling anymore due to the chain saw and die grinders, but it sure is nice to make the big chips and get into that groove and just bang away. You can remove a heck of a lot of wood in a hurry–just not as fast as the chainsaw. Why use it? I can’t chainsaw up something that is not anchored and this fore arm was not. I even used the wide one a bit and the deep gouge. I do/have done 99.9% of all my chiseling with that old shallow gouge with all the duct tape on the end and the dot of white paint on it from my Mickey Mantle statue. Why? You have to hit bigger gouges too hard and deeper ones take too much wood. I go to the shows and see tables and tables of chisels and tools laid out and I laugh because I don’t need any of it! One tool does most all of it. The one thing that I would buy, is time, and that they’re not selling. It’s the key ingredient.

 

Here’s the man with the rosie cheeks who someday, will be going to school on money I made breathing in all this dust and having no life. I hope he does well at school. And it may be the local college because I can not see doing another one of these and going through this again for the money I’m getting. If I can’t get nearly double, I will not take another gig. But this one is almost done and we’re going to have some fun with it I’m sure. Tommy visited me in the shop (”shop”, Read: dingy cellar) today just as I had penciled in the most famous number 3 in the world. After he left, I realized it was in the wrong place by about a half inch and so I sanded it out and redrew it.

Tommy was playing his toy piano last night and I was trying to get him to hit the keys with his right hand and he really wouldn’t. But he did hit a few notes with his left hand and I thought, “…wow, a lefty!”. If this leftiness holds up and he can throw a 100 mph, then my wife and I have planned to use some of his major league fortune to buy a place in the Ardennes, in Luxembourg.

We love the Duchy.

***

I just saw this again and it always makes me laugh.  The 1-800 Lawyers commercial on TV.

It is as if they have called down to central casting and said, “…send up a sort of a silent movie villian type…sort of an oily lawyer character actor with a waxed mustache like Snidley Whiplash on the Dudley Dooright cartoon…yea, that’ll do it…”