Marlins Get Ready to Have a Debatable Home Run Celebration at New Park

[AdamRavs]

I just wish circus music would play when it went off.
--------------------
Or Mickey Mouse music.

I just picture this playing as our HR thing is lighting up.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRRzTZh-z_8"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRRzTZh-z_8[/ame]

[kcellis]

[Namaste]

Disagree. This type of thing definitely calls for Dead or Alive.

Boys, this guy is officially my favorite new poster.

[Ramp]

because of a post about a Bon Jovi song?

[Bobbob1313]

Don't question it.

[Namaste]

because of a post about a Bon Jovi song?

No because of like his past 10-12 posts. Duh. Also, I thought he meant the GROUP Dead or Alive (not the song). The group Dead or Alive are the proper amount of obnoxious for the HR celebration thing.

Bobbob, are you still butt hurt about the Andrea thread? Por que, homes?

[Bobbob1313]

Clearly I am.

[jOOj]

You two, take it easy.

[Omar]

Red Grooms doesn't mind criticism. As a multimedia artist for more than 50 years, his painted pop-art sculptures have won accolades for their light and provocative takes on everyday life.

But his latest piece will expose him to a new audience - a crowd not used to his colorful, three-dimensional "sculpto-pictoramas' on display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and more than 30 other museums around the country.

Grooms created the mechanical statue that will dance at Marlins Park every time slugger Mike Stanton and his teammates hit a home run.

Other ballparks have elaborate props to celebrate home runs - from the big apple that rises at the New York Mets' Citi Field to the locomotive that chugs along the top of the left field wall at Houston's Minute Maid Park. But Major League Baseball hasn't seen anything like the device that is scheduled to be tested soon at the Marlins' new home.

Rising 73 feet over center field at its highest point, the Marlins' home run celebration stars - what else? - a marlin jumping in and out of the "water" on a metal track that runs along the border of the sculpture. Another marlin twirls and spins while seagulls fly over the sculpture in a colorful shower of laser lights.

"All I can tell you is it's going to be the most amusing home run feature in all of baseball,' said Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria, an art dealer whose personal collection includes Grooms' work. "There's motion, there's light, there's sound, there's water, all under the cover of great humor and fun.'

An animated rendition of the sculpture has been generating critical humor on the Internet. Sports Illustrated referred to it as a "mechanical monstrosity," while web comments range from "an embarrassment" and "tacky" to something better suited for Las Vegas.

Grooms and his designers cautioned against a rush to judgment. The animation was based on early sketches, they said, and it does not accurately portray what the final piece will look like.

"People are being a bit premature,' said Chris Morgan, the project manager for Uni-Systems, the Minneapolis-based company that built the statue's operating mechanisms.

"The animation ... just doesn't do it justice. It's hard to appreciate the presence of the thing until you see the structure in the stadium. When it goes in, it's going to be neat.'

Uni-Systems also built the mechanisms for the Marlins' retractable roof, as well as machinery for the roof and locomotive at Minute Maid Park and for the apple at Citi Field.

The Marlins' sculpture, Morgan said, "is like nothing we have done before for a home run feature, and to my knowledge it's like nothing anyone else has ever done before for a home run feature.'

Grooms, 74, said he worked on the Marlins' piece for about two years with his wife, artist Lysiane Luong.

"The fish itself was the big star of the thing,' he said, explaining how he focused immediately on the image of a marlin jumping out of water as the logical way to celebrate a Marlins home run.

He sprinkled in flamingos, birds and palm trees to represent South Florida. He arranged it all around four rising arches meant to pay homage to the Art Deco architecture of Miami Beach.

The event lasts about 27 seconds, roughly the time it takes for Stanton or one of his teammates to round the bases.

No one will divulge the cost of the item. But the $515 million ballpark budget included $5.2 million earmarked for four art projects, including the Grooms piece, according to the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs.

Loria makes no apologies to fans who might be expecting a more traditional home run feature such as the lighted Liberty Bell in Philadelphia or the smoke-blowing steamship stacks at Cincinnati's Great American Ballpark or mascot Bernie Brewer spiraling down a slide in Milwaukee.

"I've seen them all,' Loria said. "That is not what we wanted to create.'

He suggested that Grooms is too talented to do something mundane.

"This is a major American artist, and we're fortunate to have him do this for us,' Loria said. "It's going to be a landmark.'

Grooms, a native of Nashville, Tenn., who lives in New York, was once described in a New York Times article as an "eccentric sculptor and illustrator known for his love of folk art and kitsch.' He also is an avid sports fan who follows Giants football and enjoys going to Madison Square Garden to watch the Knicks.

But he admits he doesn't follow much baseball these days and has never seen a Marlins game.

"But I felt very spirited about doing this piece for the team,' he said. "I like sports myself, so I don't feel removed as a sports fan from the audience itself.'

Grooms said he hasn't read any of the criticism of this project. But he is optimistic that fans will grow to like it.

"I can never really tell what the viewer is going to think about the work,' he said with a laugh. "So it could be a toss-up of what's going to actually happen.'

Palm Beach Post

[Miamarlin21]

Anyone named Red is awesome in my book.

[Namaste]

You get the feeling that Red Grooms REALLY liked trim back in his day.

[Mainge]

And ecstasy

[Ramp]

who doesn't love both of those things?

as those people are then not for me

[Miamarlin21]

Red:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AMKj...ature=youtu.be

[Ramp]

some of you guys need to figure how to post youtubes...

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AMKjCAJK3g[/ame]