CLEVELAND — At the Baseball Heritage Museum, Thursday is one for the books. Cleveland's Baseball Club has a long history…even of its names.
“Somebody once said you play for the name on the front of the jersey, right? So it is the Cleveland Baseball Club at its core,” said museum director Ricardo Rodriguez. “It always has been. Through the Spiders, the Naps, the Blues, the Indians, they are a club of people that enjoy playing the game. And that is what unifies them.”
“This is the birthplace of Cleveland baseball,” said Rodriquez of League Park. Already the museum is making room for the next chapter. “The Baseball Heritage Museum is poised and ready to continue telling the story and the history of the Cleveland Baseball club as it is the Cleveland Guardians,” he said. “We do have some artifacts collected from spring training already and we're excited to put on display in the museum.”
“I'm going to miss Chief Wahoo because he was a part of the images that I connected with Cleveland, but moving on to the Guardians, for a lot of reasons, I think is a good thing,” said Native Clevelander and Historian Pamela Dorazio Dean.
Dorazio Dean is the Western Reserve Historical Society’s curator of Italian American History. She’s also Director of the Italian American Museum of Cleveland.
“The Guardians are really reflective of who we are as a city and our values and the people that made Cleveland a great place to be,” she said, explaining the history.
The Guardians of Traffic along Carnegie were carved in Little Italy, at the Ohio Cut Stone Company. The sandstone symbols, most likely made of rock from Amherst, were assembled on the bridge in 1932.
RELATED: Why 'Guardians'? A look at the history behind the new name of Cleveland's baseball franchise
“The Guardians are a unique symbol in Cleveland made by immigrants, primarily Italian immigrants, who came here from a town in Italy called Orino, where stone carving has a long tradition,” said Dorazio Dean. “They had a strong worth work ethic and they really put themselves into these statues. And Cleveland is a city of hard workers. People care about their city, and those values are really reflected in these statues.”
The bridge was built to connect the city, and to be beautiful, not just functional. “Frank Walker of the Cleveland architectural firm Walker and Weeks, which was very prominent in the early 20th century, came up with the concept of turning the pylons on the bridge, into these guardian statues that were representative of the Greek god, Hermes, who kind of looks over traffic, transportation, and that kind of thing…Henry Herring was the one that was the lead sculptor on this.”
They’ve survived decades and even efforts to remove them as they aged in the early 1980s. “Luckily, there was an outcry. No, we're not going to remove these. Instead, we're going to clean 'em up and, and, make, 'em look nice again.” That’s when the bridge was renamed the Hope Memorial Bridge, in honor of Bob Hope’s father, British immigrant William Henry Hope. He too was part of the carving team.
“To remember who made the Guardians, why they're here, and how they're contributing to their city today just makes for a much more rich community and a more connected community,” said Dorazio Dean.
You can learn more about the Baseball Heritage Museum and events at League Park here.
You can visit tools, plans and other artifacts related to the Guardians construction at the Cleveland History Center of the Western Reserve Historical Society and its library by clicking here.
More Guardians Coverage:
- A look at the Cleveland Guardians' 2022 Opening Day roster
- Terry Francona officially becomes winningest manager in Cleveland baseball history
- 3News staff makes its predictions for 2022 Cleveland Guardians season
- Cleveland Guardians say 2,500 tickets remain for home opener; schedule of festivities announced