Back when I attended the University of Nebraska @ Omaha, I was an education major.  One of my terrific classes was called, “Modern Dance,” or something like that.  The instructor of this class knew the person that was hired to make the statue in front of Rosenblatt Stadium (the home of the CWS is now at a different stadium, but they brought the statue along for the ride – as they talk about in this piece).  My instructor (Professor Metal-Corbin) told John Labja (the “statue-maker”) that she had a few college athletes in her class.  Mr. Labja thought it would be helpful for him to come into one of our classes to take some “action shots,” to get a better feel of how athletes move.  Obviously I (the basketball player) was in this class, and if I recall, we had two wrestlers and a football player in the same class.

So, John had me act like I was rounding 3rd base (right there in the dance studio “classroom”) and jump into the arms of the 3 other guys waiting for me at “home plate,” as if I had just hit the game-winning home run.  He took a bunch of pictures, took them back to his “lab,” and analyzed how athletes move when up in the arms of others in this home run celebration reenactment.

We then got word that John was not a baseball expert, and that he was looking for someone to go to his downtown studio to help him make this whole thing look as real as possible.  I said that I’d be happy to do it, so I headed downtown to meet John.  I helped him with things like where the footprints (spikes) would have accumulated in the batters box from where the batters stood.  Same thing with the catcher and umpire’s footprints.  Things like that.

Anyway, since he appreciated my help, he told me that he’d like me to come back for another visit so he could put a cast-molding (or whatever you call) over my face so we could make the statue (the “hero” in the statue) look as much like me as possible, and use it for the statue’s face.

So I headed down there a few days later.  John sat me in a chair and put this “stuff” on my face while I sat there until it completely hardened.  When it was ready, John took this “mask” off of my face, and used it make the face of the statue.

Pretty cool experience!  So, the next time they show the statue on T.V. at the CWS, be sure to tell me, “hi.”