Statue

One of this town's all-time sports greats joined Babe Ruth and Johnny Unitas today as athletes immortalized with statues in Baltimore. And with the grace that made him perhaps the best defensive third baseman in the history of baseball, former Oriole Brooks Robinson thanked the city and his supporters for the statue that will reside at Washington Boulevard Plaza between Washington Boulevard and Russell Street, directly across from the northwest side...

Before I get into this, remember, it's an opinion from a guy who never saw Frank Robinson play. If I did, I don't recall specifically. But I would have been about 5 or 6 and he would have been a player-manager in Cleveland. So I don't have any of those memories that many Orioles fans do. That's not to say I don't know much about Frank Robinson. I grew up as a kid in Baltimore in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the youngest in a baseball family. My brothers - and heck, my father - would explain to me that as good as those Eddie/Cal Orioles clubs were, they weren't close to those Frank/Brooks/Palmer teams.

Brooks Robinson gained iconic status during the years he played third base for the Orioles at Memorial Stadium. Now a local group plans to honor Robinson with a larger-than-life statue that will remind baseball fans of his heroics every time they drive past the Orioles' current home at Camden Yards. Baltimore's Public Art Commission unanimously approved plans Wednesday for a 9-foot-high, $500,000 bronze statue of Robinson that is scheduled for installation by spring 2011 on a city-owned plaza just west of Oriole Park.

The intense stare is captured, the look of a slugger tracking a ball hit well into the night. The bat is dangling from the bronzed Frank Robinson's left hand. “I'm looking at the ball going out in the outfield, but I am ready to drop that bat and get my damn butt down the bases,” the flesh-and-bones Robinson quipped Saturday evening. “I don't want to stay up there [at the plate] too long.” Robinson, the Hall of Fame outfielder who led the Orioles to their first world championship in 1966 and a string of three more World Series appearances in the next five years, on Saturday became the first player to have his likeness replicated in a life-size bronze statue in the Garden of the Greats picnic area behind center field at Camden Yards.

News item: The statue of Orioles Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson that was commissioned by the Dorothy L. and Henry A. Rosenberg, Jr. Foundation and the Babe Ruth Birthplace Foundation will be officially unveiled at noon Saturday on the Washington Boulevard Plaza outside Camden Yards. My take: What a great tribute to one of the true giants of Baltimore's sports history. Can't believe it's been 41 years since Brooks dazzled the baseball world with his MVP performance in the 1970 World Series.

After more than a year of deliberation, city officials have decided to place a bust of the late Frank Zappa at the Southeast Anchor Library in Highlandtown. The roughly 15-foot statue, a gift from a Zappa fan club in Lithuania, will be erected on the corner of Eastern Avenue and South Conkling Street sometime next year, said Anne Perkins, chair of the Public Art Commission. "We think this is a great place for it -- a terrific neighborhood" Perkins said. "I think it will be the focal point for a lot of really fun festivals."

William Donald Schaefer spent a lifetime cultivating his reputation as a "man of the people." That's just how sculptor Rodney Carroll depicts him in the Inner Harbor sculpture that will be unveiled at 1 p.m. Monday to mark Schaefer's 88th birthday. After meeting with Baltimore's Public Art Commission and others, the sculptor chose not to position Schaefer high on a pedestal or striking a heroic pose between the two pavilions of Harborplace. Instead, he set Schaefer's figure on two low marble slabs on the Inner Harbor's west shore, where it's more part of the crowd.

The intense stare is captured, the look of a slugger tracking a ball hit well into the night. The bat is dangling from the bronzed Frank Robinson's left hand. “I'm looking at the ball going out in the outfield, but I am ready to drop that bat and get my damn butt down the bases,” the flesh-and-bones Robinson quipped Saturday evening. “I don't want to stay up there [at the plate] too long.” Robinson, the Hall of Fame outfielder who led the Orioles to their first world championship in 1966 and a string of three more World Series appearances in the next five years, on Saturday became the first player to have his likeness replicated in a life-size bronze statue in the Garden of the Greats picnic area behind center field at Camden Yards.

With an increasing number of elusive culprits ripping gutters and downspouts from homes, stripping wires and stealing statues from front lawns, Baltimore County police turned to a new tool in law enforcement — a Global Positioning System device. Detectives said they attached the device to a silver Honda Civic after a Pikesville homeowner videotaped two people trying unsuccessfully to stuff a neighbor's statue of a boy and a kite into the compact car. It was the day after someone stole two monkey statues from the front of the same house.

A 40-foot bronze sculpture in rural Maryland of three New York City firefighters raising the U.S. flag at Ground Zero has failed to sell on eBay. The monument to heroes of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was offered by a court-appointed receiver for 10 days to recoup money for victims of an alleged Ponzi scheme. The auction ended Saturday with no bids. The statue was commissioned by Coadum Advisors Inc., which donated it to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation in Emmitsburg for a tax break.

Through the raindrops, the Orioles honored Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, unveiling a statue of the Orioles great beyond the left-center-field fence at Camden Yards, kicking off a season-long celebration honoring the club's six Hall of Famers. Those in attendance for the ceremony included Robinson and fellow Hall of Famers Hank Aaron, Jim Palmer and Earl Weaver. Rick Dempsey, Brady Anderson, Boog Powell and Don Buford - all members of the Orioles Hall of Fame - were there, too, as were current Orioles center fielder Adam Jones, right fielder Nick Markakis, manager Buck Showalter, first base coach Wayne Kirby and Oakland Athletics manager Bob Melvin, a former Oriole - all in uniform.

As a player and manager, Frank Robinson represented seven major league organizations in eight cities. These days, he lives about 2,700 miles away in the Los Angeles area and makes it back to Baltimore only about two or three times a year. But when Robinson gets stopped in the street, wherever he is, there's one team people almost always ask him about. "People will say, 'I remember you, you played with the Orioles,'" Robinson said. "I'll say, 'Well, I played 10 years with Cincinnati first.' "'Oh, you did?

Boston may be slipping ahead in the Edgar Allan Poe arms race -- the city is preparing for a new bronze statue to honor the great author, even as Baltimore struggles to preserve his former home. The Baltimore Sun's Chris Kaltenbach reports that sculptor Stefanie Rocknak was selected for the $125,000 project in Boston, to be located at the intersection of Boylston Street and Charles Street South. Her design shows an adult Poe as though he had just stepped off a train. I think the design is really cool -- especially because it gives a plug to the Baltimore Ravens , right in the backyard of the New England Patriots.

Even as Edgar Allan Poe's continuing presence in Baltimore remains uncertain, another East Coast city —the one in which the celebrated author was born — is preparing to honor him with a bronze statue. Poe partisans in Boston have chosen New York sculptor Stefanie Rocknak for the $125,000 project. Her design shows an adult Poe, who left Boston as a young child, as though he had just stepped off a train. To be placed in the city's Edgar Allan Poe Square, at the intersection of Boylston Street and Charles Street South, the statue will be situated so that Poe is heading back to his birthplace.

Lady Baltimore has withstood much in 189 years perched overlooking Courthouse Square. She has lost both of her arms over the decades — one of them, holding high a wreath that signifies service to the republic, was sheared off by a gust of wind in January 1938, shattering on the pavement. And though it may be hard to tell from the street 52 feet below, wind, rain, snow, hail and pollution have dissolved much of the marble statue's eyes, nose and ears. But a new effort will finally give Lady Baltimore a new home — for her own good.

Baltimore County police have charged a New Windsor man with trying to steal a bronze statue of a boy with a kite from a Pikesville home in December, and have linked the suspect to other metal thefts around the state. Michael Francis Griesser, 25, of the 3700 block of Roop Road in Carroll County, is being held in a detention center in lieu of $20,000 bail. He is charged with nine criminal counts, including attempted theft under $10,000 and burglary. Police said in court charging documents that in addition to the statue, Griesser slso is charged with stealing copper wires and grounding plates, some worth up to $10,000, from cell phone towers in Baltimore County.

The Maryland General Assembly has an opportunity to send a new representative to the United States Capitol. This person wouldn't be a voting member of Congress but would stand tall in the halls of the Capitol and serve as a symbol of freedom, courage and equality to all Americans. This session, the Maryland legislature will decide whether or not to replace the statue of John Hanson that has stood in National Statuary Hall for more than 100 years with one of Harriet Tubman. National Statuary Hall was established in 1864 by an act of Congress.

As artist Joseph Sheppard pondered creating a statue of one of baseball's icons, one image of Brooks Robinson kept flashing through his mind: having stabbed a scorching grounder, the Orioles' third baseman readies to throw out the runner at first. Eyes fixed on his target, ball firmly in grasp, Robinson appears predictable, orderly, calm. "Of the hundreds of photos of Brooks that I studied, that pose kept popping up, all through his [23-year] career," Sheppard said. "Whether he had a crew cut or long hair, wore loose pants or tight pants on the field, that pose never changed.

The Baltimore Sun Though the small statue with the greenish hue is nicknamed "The Modest Venus," she is anything but. It's true that the 10-inch figurine from the Italian Renaissance has one hand demurely covering her fig-leaf area, and the other held up as if to fend off unwanted advances. But around 1500, an anonymous metalworker crafted the Venus from bronze, which is naturally cool and pleasing to the touch. He gave her rounded limbs and an abundance of undulating curves; her buttocks might have been expressly designed to fill an adult's cupped palm.