"The statue stands half cradled in a potentially blinding, mirror-like concave metal hollow that reflects the city upon which the statue gazes," writes an anonymous blogger at CBS Las Vegas. We took a good look at his picture and, at first glance, he appears to be a non-specific baseball player, in keeping with the Vegas Club’s external resemblance to a baseball stadium. Says Dennis McBride, director of the Nevada State Museum, "So far as I know, when Mel Exber put up that first tower, in 1980-ish, he put up that [statue] as a generic representation of a baseball player, since he’s a great aficionado of sports."
Vegas Club expert Jeff Leatherock, however, believes that the oversized, gilded batter represents Mickey Mantle, on the basis of the statue’s deep knee-bend swing, short-sleeved uniform and southpaw stance. And what of the old sports Hall of Fame? "A few of the pictures and jerseys" --- like a Comiskey Park banch and Warren Moon’s All-Pro jersey -- still remain from Exber’s sports Hall, says Leatherock, but the Vegas Club has been mostly denuded of memorabilia. That statue, however, is a little too big and prominent to disappear without anyone noticing, it would seem.
