STATUESQUE

I saw four statues around PNC Park. Three are outside the walls — the famous 1955 statue of Honus Wagner and later ones of Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell. These are impressive.

The fourth “statue” is inside the park. While the other three are full-body, action figures, this one, of Ralph Kiner, is just his hands gripping a bat.

That’s all. Right at the foot of an escalator, a pair of hands on a pedestal, holding a bat. Some civilization thousands of years from now will find that and think it’s like the Venus de Milo, a fragment of one of our great statues. But that’s all there ever was.

Pete Aldrich: What’s the story there? Did Kiner pose but get bored and leave after they’d finished his hands?