LONACONING, Md. (AP) - Major League Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Lefty Grove returned to his hometown of Lonaconing on Aug. 27 in the form of a 22-inch bronze model of a statue that will be erected in his honor.
“I love Lefty’s facial features, they are so nice to work with,” said Florida-based sculptor Susan Luery who brought the maquette to a crowded unveiling party at the Georges Creek Public Library.
“I put my heart and soul into this project,” Luery said. “I want to make Lefty Grove come alive again for the people of Lonaconing.”
Luery will begin work on the full-size bronze statue that will be placed in the town’s park at the corner of Main and Union streets, perhaps in 2017, but more likely in 2018.
A second phase of the project is the renovation of the park that will transform it into an old-fashioned baseball stadium, the sort in which Robert Moses “Lefty” Grove won 300 games for the Philadelphia Athletics and Boston Red Sox.
Luery, with Lefty’s 1931 Most Valuable Player trophy as a backdrop, said she had a young man wear an old baseball uniform and photographed him in various stages of a pitcher’s delivery.
The MVP trophy is permanently housed at the library.
“And his name was Casey. You can’t get any better than that,” Luery said of the young man and referenced the famous baseball poem “Casey at the Bat.”
Luery said the full-size bronze statue will contain more detail than the maquette.
“This has been a great undertaking,” Bucky Schriver, who conceived the idea of a bronze statue for the hurler, said.
“I greatly underestimated the reach of Georges Creek’s roots to other parts of the country,” Shriver said. “We heard from and got donations from places such as North Carolina, Arizona and even a Hollywood actor.”
The money is in the bank to pay Luery for her work and there is a start on gathering cash to renovate the park.
Greg Getty, a member of the fund raising committee, said the maquette will be displayed at various businesses and public settings around Allegany County so residents can see a miniature Lefty delivering a high, hard one and get a feel for what the bronze of more than 6 feet will look like.
Lonaconing resident Mike Grove - Lefty’s great-nephew - was also at Saturday’s unveiling.
“When Bucky started talking about this and when I heard the dollar amount I thought, ’Man, we’re going to have to sell a lot of hoagies,’” Grove said. “But the donations started coming and I could see it happening.”
Richard Cutter, also a Lonaconing resident, said when he was in high school in 1957 and 1958, he set pins in a bowling alley Lefty owned and operated after he retired from professional baseball.
“Lefty gave me a Boston Red Sox jacket and I wore it until it wore out. I wish I would have just put it in a closet,” Cutter said.
Lonaconing Mayor Jack Coburn said he anticipates the statue will bring visitors from widespread locations to his remote town in Mountain Maryland.
“This will be a tremendous tribute to small-town values,” he said.
The full-size sculpture will be finished at the New Arts Foundry in Baltimore.
“I’ve worked with them for 35 years,” Luery said. “They are family to me.”
Schriver said he realizes the project is expensive, but added, “The money we are putting into this is nothing compared to what Lefty Grove has done for us.”
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Information from: Cumberland (Md.) Times-News, https://www.times-news.com/timesnew.html
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