Whenever a new statue is unveiled, you can be sure opinion will divide on whether it hits the mark.
And that’s been the case since the Patriots recently introduced their new iteration of legendary Tom Brady, a bronze colossus that with its five-foot base stands 17 feet tall.
The image by Massachusetts sculptor Jeff Buccacio, showing the “Greatest Of All Time” with a raised clenched fist and holding a helmet at his side, has come across as satisfactory to some fans but not so much to others.
I lean toward ambivalence – I see no evidence of Brady’s on-field dynamism, or a football, or a Super Bowl trophy of the kind Brady won seven times, an NFL record.
A fan survey by WEEI Sports Radio gave the statue a tepid collective grade of B-minus.
Among common complaints, noted the sports network ESPN, was that the sculpture makes Brady’s head disproportionately small – “a decidedly tiny noggin.”
As for the face, some fans said it’s perfect, while others felt it doesn’t resemble Brady at all.
The spectrum of opinion piqued my curiosity about alternative poses, so I asked Artificial Intelligence to make me a photo of a statue showing Brady dropping back to pass, and here is the result:
You can decide for yourself whether the actual choice works: Here’s the real statue, which reportedly cost about $7 million, at the recent unveiling outside Gillette Stadium:
The sculptor said in a Patriots video that the owners wanted to avoid showing Brady in a characteristic game pose, but rather, “they wanted him to feel sort of stoic” just after victory, “sort of exhausted, but still standing tall and proud.”
The work’s merit may be debated; but it’s certainly not the disaster that befell images of other sports greats.
The statue of legendary pitcher Walter Johnson in Washington was described by Johnson’s biographer grandson as “hideous.”
Rolling Stone magazine said of a Stan Musial statue that whoever made it “had very little understanding of how the body of human males appears…”
And the magazine described a statue of famed Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray as “reminiscent of a flesh-eating zombie.”
Other celebrities have met a similar fate: The face on a statue of Lucille Ball, in her hometown of Celoron, N.Y., was so terrifying it was nicknamed “Scary Lucy,” and outraged fans successfully petitioned for a remake.
Figures from history have not escaped bad statuary, and one of the worst coincidentally stands at the confluence of Rhode Island and Massachusetts Avenues in Washington.
It shows Civil War General Winfield Scott astride a “stallion” that is suspiciously the smaller size of a mare. That’s because Scott favored riding mares, so the sculptor accurately put him on one.
But Scott’s family and admirers balked when they saw the design, saying a mare was not befitting of the general’s stature. They successfully pressured the sculptor to add what many accounts describe as a “male appendage.”
So for all time, a fraudulent stallion is a part of our nation’s capital.
In Patriot Nation, however, no one – regardless of discussion on the Brady statue – thinks there’s anything fictional about the accomplishments of New England’s favorite G.O.A.T.
Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.
