The BASEBALL RELIQUARY Inc.
HILDA CHESTER MEMORIAL FUND
FOR THE
REBUILDING OF EBBETS FIELD
“Ebbets Field itself had something to do with the love affair. It was a tiny, comfortable park seating only 32,000, not one of the massive ballyards, such as the Polo Grounds or Yankee Stadium. Ebbets Field was personal and familiar, and the fans responded to that. It was a suitable place for falling in love with the game.” ~ Peter Golenbock, from Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers (1984)
On July 29, 2001, the Baseball Reliquary announced that it had begun a fundraising campaign for the construction of an extraordinary artifact: a scale-model replica of Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field executed in the form of a non-edible show cake.
Of all the baseball palaces that no longer exist, none has been more romanticized than Ebbets Field, located in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York and home of the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1913 through 1957. Ebbets Field occupies a unique niche in American social history because it was there, on April 15, 1947, that Jackie Robinson debuted as the first black player in the major leagues in the twentieth century.
Over forty years after the wrecking ball demolished this landmark stadium, the original concrete and steel edifice will be rebuilt in painstaking detail using contemporary sugar products. The Baseball Reliquary has commissioned William Robert Steele, an internationally-recognized confectionery artist, to design and construct the replica. A graduate of the Baking School of Technology in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Mr. Steele is employed making wedding and specialty cakes for the Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, California. He specializes in large-scale cake “monuments,” and his recently completed replica of the United States Capitol building in Washington, DC received the grand prize at a national competition held in Las Vegas in September 2001.
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The dimensions of the Ebbets Field replica will be approximately 32” by 40” in width and 24” in height, and it will be housed in a specially-designed Plexiglas display case. The cake itself is non-edible and has a plasticizer or hardener mixed in with the sugar products to give it permanence; in fact, it will be capable of standing for centuries, which is far longer than the original stadium survived. Construction will take approximately six months, with a projected completion date of April 1, 2002. The Baseball Reliquary is now looking for an appropriate public venue in the Southern California area to display the Ebbets Field cake for a period of at least one year.
To raise the required funds for the commission, the Baseball Reliquary has established the Hilda Chester Memorial Fund for the Rebuilding of Ebbets Field. Part of the nostalgia for Ebbets Field reflects the love affair between the Dodgers and their fans, and no fan was more beloved than Hilda Chester. The rebuilt stadium will be dedicated in her memory.
The Baseball Reliquary is now accepting contributions to the Hilda Chester Memorial Fund for the Rebuilding of Ebbets Field, with all donations going toward the completion of this landmark project. Individuals making tax-deductible donations of $100 or more will have their names inscribed on a plaque to be exhibited with the Ebbets Field replica.
The Baseball Reliquary will be updating its Web site in the coming months with additional details relating to this project as well as photos of the Ebbets Field cake under construction. In addition, look for information on a series of public events sponsored by the Baseball Reliquary in conjunction with the unveiling of the Ebbets Field cake in April 2002.
"I have been trying to find a single memory so vivid and so real that one can understand, with the shock of recognition, what the place called Ebbets Field once meant. It was my ballpark and before that it was my father’s ballpark. . . It was the Elysium of boyhood. The wrecker’s ball, crashing against Furillo’s wall, destroying mortar, laying waste a monument. Steam shovels assaulting soil that had felt the spikes of Reese and Robinson. We thought, we had always thought, that Ebbets Field would stand for centuries.” ~ Roger Kahn, on the demolition of Ebbets Field
Contributions to the Hilda Chester Memorial Fund for the Rebuilding
of Ebbets Field
should be made payable to:
The Baseball Reliquary, PO Box 1850, Monrovia, CA 91017
Telephone: (626) 791-7647 / e-mail: skpubs@earthlink.net
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