LOS ANGELES — We don’t much believe in statues. We should believe in statues. Statues can be absurd; there is a statue of Stan Musial outside the newest incarnation of Busch Stadium, for instance. And much of the statue really does channel Stan the Man: the batting stance, the smile.
You half expect Bronze Stan to whip out a marble harmonica and start wheezing “Oh, Susanna!”
There’s one problem: The sculptor apparently considered The Man’s weapon of choice as unimportant. If he thought about it at all, it was an afterthought. Anyway, the bat in Bronze Stan’s hands … well, it more closely resembles a vertical garden hose. It’s impossible not to stare at, impossible to ignore. Stan the Man could not possibly have amassed 3,630 hits with that in his hands …
And ask even one Cardinals fan if they care. They love that statue. They revere that statue. They meet friends at that statue, the way Yankees fans used to use The Bat as a meeting place. Statues get a pass, and endless supplies of editorial license.
There are six statues at Staples Center, where on Wednesday night the Rangers and the Kings met in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals. There is golden-boy boxer Oscar de la Hoya. There is famed basketball announcer Chick Hearn. There are three forever Lakers: Jerry West, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
And there is Wayne Gretzky.
And it’s funny: The Kings have gone on to win a Stanley Cup in their history, and they may well add a second by the time this series is over. They have elbowed their way into the sporting conversation. As Bill Plaschke, the splendid columnist for the Los Angeles Times, put it when the Kings won their Cup two years ago:
“The game of small-town Canada has just been heisted by Hollywood. A group of bearded beach bums has just stolen sports’ most chilling trophy and stuck it where the sun shines …
But it’s Gretzky who gets the statue, because it was Gretzky who made hockey matter here. Gretzky’s greatest days as The Great One were mostly in his rearview mirror when the Kings swung the deal that imported him from Edmonton almost 26 years ago. The closest he ever came was 1993, when the Kings were the victims in the Canadiens’ final march to a 24th Cup.
And so he gets the statue (actually, it’s one of three; naturally there is a Gretzky statue in Edmonton, where he had his greatest days, but there is also one right as you enter the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame at the Olympic Park in Calgary.) It is an increasingly popular trend.
And it has yet to infiltrate New York.
Yes, Yankee Stadium has Monument Park, and the plaques are a part of the team’s history, and its legacy. But that’s about as close as we come to immortalizing immortals in bronze, marble or clay.
There are many Mets fans who would very much like to see a statue of Tom Seaver built in somewhere on the exterior of Citi Field, as both a commemoration of the frachise’s most important player (his nickname, after all, was “The Franchise”) and an iconic Mets-flavored meeting spot. Right now, there’s the original Top Hat and Apple and … well, that’s different than a statue.
But Citi Field isn’t alone. Barclays Center opened and there wasn’t a hint of having a statue out front — the Nets haven’t been around long enough but there certainly could have been a place to commemorate the old Dodgers, if they’d wanted. There are no statues of Lawrence Taylor or Bill Parcells at MetLife Stadium.
And for the $1 billion facelift Madison Square Garden has undergone in the past four years, there are no statues of Mark Messier, Walt Frazier or Red Holzman greeting you on your way in the doors (which will make moving easier if the city finds a way to kick the Garden to the curb in 10 years).
Maybe it’s just not our way, not our thing. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Still, Wednesday night, a steady stream of Kings fans made their way to the Gretzky statue, seeking a blessing as if entering a cathedral for High Mass. It matters to them.