Gardener's Stone – Decorative Stoneware for Home and Garden

After the Philadelphia (PA, USA) Phillies baseball team won the 1980 World Series, I made a series of three sculptures: Pete Rose, Julius “Dr. J” Erving, and Bobby Clark… of the Phillies, 76’ers basketball team, and Flyers hockey team respectively. The only one that survives is Pete.

Dramatic, Daring, Athletic

It was created somewhere around 1980–85 and finalized in stone duplicates in 2003. I always hoped — and still hope to this day in 2024 — to have it made into an ‘heroic-sized’ statue, whether in Philadelphia or Cincinnati. In 2018 a somewhat similar statue was in fact made and placed outside the Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati. So it’s now only logical to hope that my version of Pete’s iconic slide goes in Philly.

You might notice the hands (with gloves on) are a bit bulky and crude. I think this casting might even have sustained a break in a finger or two, but in either case the fingers are intentionally thick to try to minimize such breakage in the stone castings. In bronze, which would not be as vulnerable, the artwork could be more accurate, with thinner fingers.

Details

The Original Clay Model

Along the way I showed the original clay model to Pete at an autograph signing in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania some time in the ‘90’s I suppose, and he seemed to like it but nothing came of the brief crossing of paths. My folks subsequently move to Vegas, where Pete routinely signed signatures. I stopped by to revisit the topic with him, showing it to him this time only on an iPad. He was very appreciative and in fact said he thought the pose was more representative of his body of work than the iconic scene of him catching Bob (‘Bobble’?) Boone’s bobble in those same ’80 playoffs.

Back Detail and Casting List

I subsequently sent a casting to Pete, so his family has one. There are only a few others:

The Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame has one. At the first ever annual induction meeting of that hall in 2002, I displayed two castings. Both were sold, one by the the Hall of Fame itself.
The other at the HOF meeting was bought by another attendee.
Another was purchased online a few years later by a resident of Mason, Ohio.
The fifth was given in September of 2024 to a great fan of Pete, the owner of The Wellsboro House Restaurant in Wellsboro, PA. This is the last of all the current castings.

The Pose from the Philadelphia Journal

The pose was imagined from Pete’s inimitable head-first, all-out slide into home, but there was a newspaper image that captured it so perfectly that it became the model, the cover of the short-lived Philadelphia Journal, shown here.

Eating Dirt

You try it.

Stone Casting, Uncoated

The model sculpture is about 20″ head-to-toe, and 12″ tall. It weighs perhaps 15 pounds in a tough plaster called Drystone, which was used for all of the 5 extant castings.

The base is shaped like home plate, a design I’m very proud of, I must say. It’s named “Determination,” and the name imagined for the triumvirate with ‘The Doctor” and Bobby Clarke was to have been “Courage, Skill, and Determination.”

Signature Detail

I think I mistakenly labeled two of the castings “#1″… one of the two sold at the Philly HOF and the one given to Wellsboro. Oops, thus are good stories woven.

Making a "Heroic" Sized Statue

It takes the better part of $100,000 to make one of those stadium sculptures, but I believe it’s a very straightforward process for a foundry to do it from any of the 5 castings. Laran Bronze offered a very rough estimate in 2016, for just the body, not the base: mould — $ 28,000.00; finished casting in bronze — $ 36,000.00. I think “mould” also implies someone totally creating the full-size “model,” which means possibly using a huge pantograph and finishing out the surface details. If that happens after I’m gone, I’ll bet the starting place would be an art school, where it might make a great student project.

I imagine funding such a project by donations from the public, with the idea that the actual signatures of the donors would be engraved in the base, in proportion to the amount donated. The base (the home plate shape) would be heightened straight up (visually extruded) approximately 5 feet off the ground, so that photos could be taken beside the statue without obscuring the visitor or the sculpture.

Cantilevering? Sure it would be artistically dramatic to fully cantilever the legs, and I’d explore it but an equally appealing design would be to place supports right below the knees, using likenesses of V-arranged baseball bats, possibly atop a glove on the ground. The drama of full cantilevering is nice, but bats and a glove might be pretty neat looking too.

Flight 1

Head-on.

Flight 2, Bobby Orr

Stanley Cup-winning goal in 1970. Check out the look of the St. Louis player. This photo should be in the dictionary for the word “juxtaposition.”

Tom Tsuchiya's Cincinnati Sculpture

In 2017, a large sculpture by of Pete by Tom Tsuchiya was installed at Cincinnati’s Great American Ballpark. Tom also created several other works installed at the park and elsewhere in the Cincinnati. It depicts Pete sliding straight into a square base and is 100% cantilevered.

Pete Rose Statue Proof