It is one of the most popular stops inside of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and May be one of the most cherished, revered locations in all of baseball.
The Baseball Hall of Fame plaque Gallery in Cooperstown.
On these walls hang the bronze plaques of the most exclusive club in sports. And like election to the Hall of Fame itself, the making of the plaques requires patience, skill and talent.
Matthews International of Pittsburgh, PA, renowned specialist in memorials and tributes, takes great pride in creating the Hall of Fame plaques and has been doing so since 1983.
The annual process begins right after the announcement of the newest class of Hall of Famers.
We start working with Matthews very early in the process in January, selecting a series of photos that we share with the sculptor to give her a sense of the depth, the facial configuration, the era, the type of logo, this specific look. We would like to have a player represented on his plaque here at the Hall of Fame.
The bronzing of a Hall of Fame career starts with the sculpting of the image for the plaque, and Mindy Ellis is the artist entrusted with that task year after year.
Although I've completed 76 National Baseball Hall of Fame plaques for Matthews and Hall, each one has been.
Unique in itself, it hasn't lost any of its luster for me. I'm excited and feel just as much emotion each year when I get to begin on these because I know how important it is and how important it is for their families and friends to enjoy these plaques.
You know, Mindy's like a national treasure, and she does excellent work. And it's a it's a talent that she has refined for many years. When you talk with her about some of the education that she's been through, you know, in actual anatomy and studying the faces, and there's a lot involved with this. I mean, it's not just putting some clay on a pattern and just turning it over to us. There's a lot involved.
Hi, Jay.
Mindy's clay reliefs are then brought to Matthews, where the process of sand casting begins.
Sandcasting turns Mindy's.
Artwork.
Into a mold into which molten bronze can be.
Poured.
Once out of the mold, the excess bronze is removed using cutting and sandblasting.
The plaques are then.
Reviewed tooled.
Touched up.
Polished.
Made ready for the big reveal on induction day in Cooperstown.
The Baseball Hall of Fame is considered one of the greatest professional sports hall of fames of all time. And so we have the opportunity to show our product and hollow grounds there in Cooperstown. And when those plaques go on the wall, it's really a special experience to see that because it leaves here as a product and it goes on the wall as a relic. You know it's it goes on the wall as a piece of history.
So we we are fortunate enough to be the exclusive provider of the actual induction ceremony plaques of each of the baseball players being inducted and contribute. And there's nothing better than when you take your family and friends to visit the greatest museum in the world.
And you can go to each of the plaques of the ballplayers and say, yes, that came out of my plant. Our people did this. And and that's why, I mean, we take great pride in everything we do here, but we take a little bit of extra pride with the baseball Hall of Fame. It's truly a remarkable thing to be a part of.
This room represents the most hallowed ground in all of baseball. It's the place where the game's greats, the top 1% of players, managers, umpires and executives, live on forever on any given day. As fans interface with this gallery and walk through, it's a moment where they connect generations a mother and a son, a father and a daughter, grandfather and grandson, sharing tales of baseball heroes, names that they may not have heard of. But the plaque gives an insight into that.
Players.
Career.
So the plaque is timeless. It's a representation of an individual written so that 50 years into the future, someone who has never heard of, say, Bobby Dorr or Willie Mays could walk into the plaque gallery, read the word text, see the plaque image, and have a sense of what this player meant to baseball.
It is a meticulous, involved process that results in an eternal tribute in bronze to a legendary baseball career.
The first opportunity I had to work on this baseball Hall of Fame inductee project with Matthews Braum's International. I was just floored that I was going to be given this opportunity knowing the importance of the museum's plaques and the players careers and how much respect people have for the the whole thing. And actually how many people would see these plaques and the posterity of that museum.