This Husky batter was staring down some formidable foes—racism, pollution, terrorism. But he was having a ball.
In August 1989, at Carter Playground, a local artist named Jerry Beck created a public-art installation called the International Off-Season Baseball League. The installation used baseball as a theme to get Boston kids interested in the arts and in fighting social ills.
A 200-foot bat-shaped structure held a pitching booth, a batting cage (shown here), souvenir stores, a display of uniforms artfully designed to represent social-justice themes, and a gallery exhibition called the Hall of Game. Next to this giant bat, a giant baseball sported the autographs of the Northeastern nine.
Besides helping to staff the activities and give the kids some baseball pointers, the Huskies provided equipment and a batting machine.
Locating the installation on Columbus Avenue made the baseball theme a natural. The first World Series was played on land that became part of the Northeastern campus. And Carter Playground once hosted contests between teams of black professional players, then excluded from participating in Major League games.
Today, Beck serves as the artistic director of the Revolving Museum, in Lowell, Massachusetts. Last year, the museum won a Massachusetts Cultural Council Commonwealth Award for its success in integrating arts and the humanities into communities.
The transformative power of art blasts another home run.
— Magdalena Hernandez, MBA’02