CINCINNATI — Cincinnati police have charged a 13-year-old with vandalism after the teen allegedly damaged a statue honoring Reds icon Marty Brennaman outside Great American Ball Park.
On September 6, the Reds unveiled the artwork for the man who served as the team's voice for 46 years. Just under two months later, the microphone appeared to have been broken off.
Video provided by police showed someone pulling at the bronze microphone that sits in front of Brennaman's face. The microphone then appeared to snap off.
The bronze sculpture of the Reds Hall of Famer was created by artist Tom Tsuchiya. We got the chance to join Brennaman and his wife, Amanda, at Tsuchiya's studio, for a look at the early sculpture one month before its planned unveiling.
Brennaman told us the statue, which is located between statues of Pete Rose and Joe Morgan, is one of his biggest honors.
"Number one. And people I've talked to have said 'bigger than the baseball Hall of Fame?' and I said 'yeah, and I'll tell you why,'" said Brennaman in March. "Because had I not been accepted here when I came in 1974 to replace Al Michaels, had I not been embraced eventually by the people in this town, this would never have happened. The baseball Hall of Fame would never have happened. None of that stuff would have happened."
Unlike the other statues on Crosley Terrace, this one was intended to be static, showing Marty sitting and calling a game like he did for over four decades.
"We actually got Marty into the announcer booth, and we ... digitally scanned him. We actually had him pose," Tsuchiya told us.
Tsuchiya said one of the most challenging things about creating the statue was making it look like the bronze version of Brennaman looked as alive as he does in the flesh.
This is not the first time in recent years that a bronze statue was damaged: In 2022, the Capitoline Wolf statue in Eden Park was hacked off at the paws and stolen. Despite a $50,000 reward offered for any information that could have led to the safe recovery of that statue, no one came forward and the thieves remain unidentified years later.
Eventually, Cincinnati Parks partnered with the Order of the Sons & Daughters of Italy to oversee the installation of a replacement statue, which was unveiled a year later, in 2023.
