Facing the Block

BY KEVIN KERNAN

Not all superstars are on the field.

Sculptor Armand LaMontagne was a true American treasure. If you have visited the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum you have seen his work. His lifelike wood sculptures of two of the game’s greatest hitters, Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, welcome you into the Plaque Gallery in Cooperstown.

In the ‘90s, a mutual friend put me in touch with LaMontagne and I was able to visit his Rhode Island home and studio to watch him work. At the time he was sculpting his second Ted Williams piece of art, this one of Fly-fishing Ted.

LaMontagne called his projects: “Facing the block.’’

The challenge was to turn a huge block of wood into a lifelike figure.

Armand and Ted became friends because neither one of them believed in BS. They both told it like it is. That day Armand regaled me and my young son Casey, who made the trip to Rhode Island with me, with stories about Ted. He even presented Casey with a piece of wood block from the Fisherman Ted sculpture and wrote on it a “Chip off the old block.’’

It was a wonderful gesture, but that was Armand LaMontagne, one of the greatest sculptors in American history.

Ted Spencer, former curator at the Baseball Hall of Fame, once said of the Babe Ruth sculpture, “It’s like you can look into the eyes and see the soul.’’

Armand passed away earlier this month at the age of 86 and the news of his death brought back wonderful memories of that visit. One of the best things about my job through the decades is having a front row seat to greatness. I would put Armand LaMontagne up there with the greatest athletes, people like Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali or Ted Williams, a superstar’s superstar who was incredibly down to earth.

Besides spending hours in his workshop on his property, a house he built himself, Armand took me to a nearby Catholic Church, where he proudly showed me a sculpture of Christ on the Cross that he made. It was breathtaking and incredibly researched. Armand pointed to Jesus’ calves, and these were the calves of an athlete. In his research he determined the amount of walking Jesus did on a weekly basis and calculated what those calves would look like having walked so many dusty miles.

Every detail was perfect in all his work.

Ted Spencer, former curator at the Baseball Hall of Fame, once said of the Babe Ruth sculpture, “It’s like you can look into the eyes and see the soul.’’

Armand made wood come alive in his life-size sculptures.

Three years ago, I visited the Hall of Fame with Casey and his son Jack, and we all marveled at Armand’s work, three generations taking in the Ted Williams and Babe Ruth sculptures, standing side by side.

Armand’s work has stood the test of time. Among his numerous works of art are wood sculptures of Boston sports icons Larry Bird, Bobby Orr, Carl Yastrzemski and Harry Agganis, a Boston University star, who played for the Red Sox and died at the age of 26. Much of his work is displayed in The Sports Museum in Boston, housed on Levels 5 and 6 of the TD Garden. LaMontagne also was a gifted painter and six of his paintings are in The Sports Museum.

If you are ever visiting Boston, this is a must stop even if you are a Yankee fan.

Richard Johnson, who has served as the museum’s curator since 1982 was a close friend of LaMontagne’s and in a beautiful story he wrote for the Boston Globe this week he said this of LaMontagne: “In many ways he was a man of a different century. His legacy is that of having been, in the estimation of many, America’s greatest wood portrait sculpture. He also was one hell of a carpenter and painter. The Sports Museum displays many of his best works in both artistic mediums. He is our enduring star.’’

Yes, a no-nonsense star who sculpted American heroes.

Minute details are what set Armand’s work apart. Larry Bird’s sneakers, carved of wood and painted, look so real you can almost hear them squeaking along the Garden floor. Then there is Bobby Orr’s gloves or Ted Williams Red Sox cap and Babe’s round face. It is hard to believe that all that is wood.

Essentially LaMontagne was the same perfectionist as all these superstars, but his medium was in carving huge blocks of wood.

LaMontagne also carved General George S. Patton from a three foot by seven-foot block of laminated basswood. The statue is located at the General George Patton Museum at Fort Knox.

Icons come to life with his sculptures and Williams, a man who was not easy to please, loved LaMontagne’s work, especially the one of Ted standing there in his fly-fishing gear holding an Atlantic salmon. Also, in 1999, LaMontagne was commissioned to create a half-scale sculpture of Ted standing On Deck and it became another beautiful piece.

LaMontagne was a self-taught sculptor, and that day told me how he received a rejection letter from the Rhode Island School of Design after graduating high school. He persevered.

Again, I was there when the full-size Fly-fishing Ted sculpture was being crafted. One magnificent move of the chisel and mallet at a time with curled wood shavings spread across the floor in a workshop from another time lined with antique tools and dusty pictures of his many subjects.

To begin his work with a full block of wood in front of him, LaMontagne first drew an outline on the block and then began to cut with a chainsaw. Then it was onto mallet and chisel and then much finer wood-carving tools as each magnificent piece came to life.

On that day, I remember LaMontagne telling me that in his very first meeting with Williams in this studio, the two hit it off so well that by the end of the meeting Williams had LaMontagne swinging a baseball bat. Imagine that: an artist in a work shirt and pants swinging a baseball bat under Ted Williams guidance.

Indeed, LaMontagne’s work gives whole new meaning to Ted’s nickname, the Splendid Splinter.

Williams, of course, was the last major leaguer to hit .400, batting .406 back in 1941. I remember while standing in awe in that studio, Armand telling me that he was not afraid to go back at Ted and at one point, during the first work, commissioned by Jean Yawkey, Williams was grousing about the amount of time it took for the sculpture to be completed, Armand had heard enough and grabbed his chisel and mallet and told Ted, “Here, you finish it.’’

That is how you handled Ted Williams. In the end, when Ted’s Hall of Fame statue was unveiled in 1985, it brought tears to Teddy Ballgame’s eyes and it was perfect in every detail, every fold of the uniform, even to the point of having Ted choking up on the bat. At the unveiling, Williams told baseball writer Jim Henneman, “Depending on who was pitching, I was always one-quarter of an inch to one half an inch up on the bat.’’

Of his sculptures LaMontagne said the face was always the most difficult part, “I always tell people if you can do a face you can do anything,’’ he once explained. “With a face you have to show emotion, you have to show a presence of mind, a good feeling, a bad feeling, fear or what have you. To do that in a three-dimensional object is difficult.’’

As his baseball statue was unveiled, Williams began to cry and said, “You might argue about the subject, but you can’t argue about the work.’’

LaMontagne was a man’s man, so much so, he built his own house – and this wasn’t just any house. This was a house that was a replica of the kind of homes that were built in Rhode Island more than 300 years ago. He built it all by hand, and to top it off he built the stone walls around the house as well, bringing to mind the words of poet Robert Frost and the Mending Wall.

Good fences make good neighbors.

A superstar artist like Armand LaMontagne made superstar athletes come to life again, all in a block of wood. Facing the block became his field of dreams.

God speed, Armand.