Can Cubs in World Series revive interest in a Chicago baseball museum? – Chicago Tribune
Like a certain Chicago professional baseball club, Dr. David Fletcher’s team has come close to realizing its dream a few times, only to have those hopes crash. Maybe the latest turn in his odyssey is an encouraging omen.
For more than a decade, Fletcher’s dream has been to build the Chicago Baseball Museum, a gleaming 20,000-square-foot structure that would include a “Mt. Rushmore-like pantheon” of Chicago baseball figures, on-field virtual reality exhibits, theater, pitching and batting tunnels, even a library and outdoor baseball diamond.
But funding has failed to materialize.
Then, this week the museum, which only exists online and in a trove of materials stored in two locations, received a donation of nine baseballs. One carries timely significance.
Chicago Cubs legends Hack Wilson, Rogers Hornsby, Gabby Hartnett and Cliff Heathcote, all of whom played for the 1929 team, autographed the ball. That Cubs team was the first to play a World Series in Wrigley Field, and the ball was donated Tuesday, the day the most recent incarnation of the Cubs played in their first World Series, albeit in Cleveland.
Could that gift and its timing be a cause for renewed optimism for the museum’s prospects?
“I think that’s a great connection,” Fletcher said on Wednesday. “I like that. It’s right on target.”
Fletcher, an occupational medicine specialist and serious historian of the game, came up with the idea of a museum around 2003, while conducting research for his unsuccessful push to clear the name of Buck Weaver. The former Chicago White Sox third baseman was implicated — many say unfairly — in the 1919 Black Sox scandal in which the team was accused of deliberately losing the World Series.
At the time, Fletcher considered creating a museum to the Black Sox. Then he thought a museum focused on Chicago baseball would have broader appeal. In 2005, Fletcher registered the museum as a nonprofit charitable organization and created a website.
He tapped into a city with a rich baseball culture and history.
For starters, Chicago has two Major League Baseball teams — the Cubs and White Sox — each filled with colorful histories.
Chicago was the site of Major League Baseball’s first All-Star Game and considered the capital of the Negro Leagues. The All-American Professional Girls Baseball League was established here in 1943. And Chicago was the softball center of the country for decades, famous and unique for a version of the game played with no mitts and a 16-inch ball.
In addition, as Fletcher and his supporters are quick to point out, Chicago’s central location and the metro region’s population of around 9.5 million also make it attractive for the museum. One feasibility study the museum produced showed a 25,000-square-foot museum would attract 110,000 visitors its first year and generate $635,000 a year above expenses.
Over the last decade, the baseball museum group nearly has sealed deals at least three times. In 2008, Fletcher secured a $500,000 state grant and began working with the village of McCook and an independent minor league team. But the team’s financing fell through, and Fletcher said he felt obligated to return the grant.
In 2010-11, baseball museum representatives worked with the Will County community of New Lenox on a concept that would have included a complex where traveling youth teams could play. That plan broke down over a dispute about who would pay for access roads to the site, Fletcher said.
About three years later, Fletcher was working with a group in Whiting, but a disagreement about the museum retaining its nonprofit status scuttled that proposal.
Museum representatives have spoken with the village of Rosemont and been approached by Orland Park and Mokena, said John Freyer, the museum’s director of operations and business development and historian. He said the former Meigs Field terminal, now used as Northerly Island’s visitors’ center, would be an ideal location.
But Freyer said he’s reached out to the city of Chicago and never received a reply.
“Anyone we make a presentation to is always very optimistic,” he added. “They think it’s a great idea,” and typically ask why it hasn’t been done before.
But many potential partners are unwilling to compromise on financial arrangements, Freyer said, and the baseball museum has been unable to attract a deep-pocketed benefactor. Along the way, Fletcher said, he has spent $500,000 of his money on the effort.
“People have said it’s a great idea,” said Fletcher, 62, who was raised in the western suburbs and resides in downstate Monticello. “I just need an angel to help get it over the top.”
Financial support to open and remain open are major challenges, said Robert Stein, executive vice president and chief program officer of the American Alliance of Museums. Equally important is maintaining a connection with the community over the years, often through educational programs, Stein added.
“If you get the educational part and the connection to the community right,” he said, “the business part usually takes care of itself.”
Fletcher said his group needs $5 million to $10 million for startup costs. For the time being, the group is considering a mobile trailer to promote interest and exhibit some of its materials, an approach Stein applauded.
“They don’t have to wait for a big check to drop to do a ton of work,” he said.
The Chicago Baseball Museum does exist in the digital world (www.chicagobaseballmuseum.org). It also hosts events, including a symposium on the Veeck family’s impact on Chicago baseball and 40-year reunion of the 1972 Chicago White Sox.
In 2008, CBM produced a documentary on Negro League legend Buck O’Neil and it is the repository for an enormous trove of materials, including players’ gear, hours of vintage game broadcasts and interviews. It also has the personal papers, library and artifacts of Jerome Holtzman, a longtime baseball writer for the Chicago Tribune and other publications, and Major League Baseball’s first historian.
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