Mural of baseball history to be painted on the side of new Urban Youth Academy facility

The news has been rolling in lately about the new baseball facility for the Marian Anderson Recreation Center at 17th and Fitzwater. The Urban Youth Academy center is expected to be completed by June and will be named the Ryan Howard Training Center based on Howard’s large contributions to the project.

Some have commented on the windowless building’s lack of street appeal, but that could soon be enhanced with a new mural from artist Mark Stockton.

This mural will be reminiscent of the old days of baseball as America’s pastime, with approximately 40 portraits to be painted on the northern-side of the facility.
The portraits will be selected based on the level of connection to baseball, art and civic history in Philadelphia. The mural will primarily be broken into a color scheme of red, blue, green and yellow. The images represented in yellow will show the African Americans involved with the Negro leagues, blue will represent youth baseball, red will show Philadelphia baseball players and green will represent the creative and civic leaders with some connection to the sport.