Big Leagues, Little Bricks

Now through September 2, the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory is home to 222,180 LEGO bricks in the shape of ballparks, sculptures of baseball players, and portraits of superstars.

"We feel like it's a merging between two great traditions that have blossomed over the years, not just survived but thrived over the years: LEGO and baseball," Anne Jewell, executive director of the museum, says. "Baseball is a fun game. LEGO is fun. So to interpret this national pastime with these beloved LEGO bricks is what we call this great double play together."

If you can't make it to Kentucky this summer, don't fret. You can take a virtual tour of the exhibit by clicking through this slideshow!

There are five stadiums made of LEGOs on display: Wrigley Field, Miller Park, PNC Park, Marlins Park and Yankee Stadium. Wrigley is one of the largest, made up of 57,960 LEGO bricks. It took artist Sean Kenney 640 hours to build it!

"Sean built them in his studio in New York, and he would send us pictures periodically," Jewell says. "And what happens is he ships them here. Wrigley Field [was so big that it] was broken down into four or five big sections, maybe more. Then he came to the museum to reassemble it."

Because of its size, Wrigley Field is incredibly detailed, from the iconic scoreboard on the outside of the park to the scoreboard to the stands full of people."It's amazement. It's pure, just the big wow," Jewell says about the reaction people have when they enter the exhibit. "The room is so bright and colorful, which is exactly what we wanted to capture with the graphics beyond the Lego pieces, you just feel like you're walking into this wonderland of action and fun.

The other large ballpark on display is Miller Park. It's made out of 35,000 LEGO bricks and took its builder, Tim Kaebisch, nine years (!!) to complete. It's so detailed that it even features a retractable roof.

"[Tim] loved LEGO, but he was starting to get bored with it and wanted to add movement," Jewell says. "So he figured out a way to add movement. Three times a day, when we open and close that roof, the crowds are just gathered around and fascinated by it."

Kaebisch built Miller Park while he was a graduate student at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Like the Wrigley build, Miller Park is finely detailed, from the archways on the facade to the netting behind home plate.

There's more to the exhibit than ballparks. There's also a display of baseball player sculptures that capture the movement and action of the game.

"If you can see the way that we staged those, we've just got huge graphics around them of slide and catch and hit with different players in the way that they look when they're doing the actual things that are being represented in the statues," Jewell says.

"Sean sent [the sculptures] to us in a conceptual kind of drawing when we were first thinking about what would go in the show," Jewell says. "And they really reminded me some of the Degas sculptures of his dancers. I think they are really cool."

"What I love about [the sculptures] is they're beautifully composed," Jewell says. "Aren't they beautiful?"

The third attraction at the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory Lego exhibit is portraits of MLB superstars. "Louisville Slugger has contracts with lots of players, old and current," Jewell says. "Since Legos are so sort-of kid-focused, so kids today would probably be more familiar with current players. So the museum went with some of today's biggest names, like Yankees' captain Derek Jeter.

The other ballplayers immortalized in Legos are Joey Votto and Buster Posey. "We thought that was a nice, well-rounded representation of Slugger guys, and the country," Jewell says.

Louisville Slugger wanted to honor baseball history in the player portraits, too. So it chose to recognize one of the greats. "Stan Musial was one of our very loyal players with Louisville Slugger," Jewell says. "With his passing last year, we chose to have him along that well with those current players."

"I think my favorite piece is the Joey Votto portrait," Jewell says. "I love the composition of it and the color scheme and so on, the look on his face. I just think, graphically, it's a terrific work of art."