Favoritemania

This is a story about five of my very favorite things in the world.

They are: (1) art, (2) the internet, (3) extremely creative people, (4) incredible generosity of which I'm the beneficiary, and (5) Fernando Valenzuela.

Now, the story in which these five favorite things come so serendipitously together is one in which I play only a bit part. The astute among you will note this in its favor. Likewise, although the story is not yet complete, it's certainly far enough along that it may be properly begun, and I know I can trust your appreciation of a good serial.

But enough talk. Or, at least, enough talk that's not telling the story. So here we go.

It was a few weeks ago when it all began. I was shuffling through the backlog of posts in my Google Reader "Blogs" folder when one of them in particular caught my eye. It was a brief rundown of a number of artists who create remarkable work out of recycled objects. I followed the links to each of their individual websites, ultimately ending up on my favorite of the bunch, iri5.com.

The artist's name is Erika Iris Simmons, and (one of) her (many) specialty(ies) is creating portraits of famous artists by repurposing the media in which their own original works exist. Think Beethoven out of sheet music, Jimi Hendrix out of a cassette tape, Monet out of a print of one of his own paintings. Crazy awesome, right? See for yourself at her Flickr page.

Anyway, in the course of looking through her website, I noticed it had a "Donations" section in which was listed a series of materials she needed for future projects. A quick glance at the entries and it was immediately apparent that I had unusual access to one of them: old lace game-used baseballs. Not having any idea how current the list was, I sent her an email asking if they were still needed.

And that's where things got ridiculous, in the best kind of way.

She emailed back, saying that baseballs were indeed still needed, and that she'd been brainstorming about a series in which she'd partially deconstruct them and use the unwound yarn to create portraits of famous players. Then, in the most preposterously over-generous offer in the history of everything, she said that if I were, in fact, able to send her a few balls, she'd be happy to send me pictures of the process and -- get this -- to make me a portrait of a player of my choice as well.

Needless to say, I emailed her back as fast as internetly possible, got on the phone with The Butler right after that, and, having received his clutch-as-always assistance with the items in question, mailed them out to her last week.

At some point in the interim, she requested player suggestions for the series in general and for my item in particular (she wanted current-era players to match the current-era baseballs). I gave her the logical names for the series, and shifted my attention to picking the subject of the one she'd so graciously offered to make me.

Now, as much as everybody knows I love The Butler, and as much as Big Slow would have delighted in adding a new exhibit to the Kevin Slowey Hall of Fame in our basement, I don't think I need to explain why I didn't choose a portrait of my little brother. Sort of relatedly, I wasn't really interested in any current players either, teammates or opponents.

But someone from the back in the 80s, when the baseballs were the same but the players were swashbuckling lunatics? Yes please. It wasn't easy to choose. Andy Van Slyke was my favorite player growing up; Darryl Strawberry was The Butler's. But Andy-Van fell into the still-too-associated-with-the-current-day-game category and D-Straw into the son-played-basketball-for-Maryland one, so they were both out. I thought about Doc Gooden and Pete Incaviglia and Chris Sabo and Chico Lind and about a thousand other guys we'd pretended to be during about a million games of Wiffle Ball growing up, but none of them felt quite right.

And then, all of a sudden, I knew.

There was only one man simultaneously awesome and ridiculous enough to be worthy of such an incredible artistic honor.

Only one man who'd appeared out of nowhere, destroyed an entire league with his screwball and his swagger, gotten a Mania named after himself, collected a bunch of trophies, faded, returned, then still somehow managed to scuffle around all the way til 1997 just to keep everybody reminiscing about how extraordinary he'd been.

That's right. Fernando Valenzuela.

Done and done.

Fast-forward to this morning. I received an email from Erika, thanking me again for the baseballs (seriously? I sent her a few baseballs and she's making me an gorgeous piece of original art? thank me?) and letting me know she'd gotten started on the project. She included a photo of the progress she'd made so far, describing it as still being "really rough." I think I'd have gone with something more like "really the greatest thing of all time," but I guess I'll let you be the judge.

Fantastic, right? Absolutely phenomenal. I cannot wait to see how it ends up.

Full photographic expose and all appropriate fanfare to come once it's finished.

Thank you, Erika!