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Shane Deegan probably likes baseball stadiums more than you do.
About 60 hours, if you’re wondering.
Of course, the official time it took Mukilteo artist Shane Deegan to construct T-Mobile Park with 12,000 Legos doesn’t take into account the 30 or so years he’s spent obsessing over ballparks.
For example:
Deegan grew up during the stadium renaissance of the 1990s, where smaller, inspired gems like Camden Yards in Baltimore happily replaced the concreate cookie cutters that populated Major League Baseball in the 1970s — like Seattle’s Kingdome, which opened in 1976 and added a nice swollen thumb vibe to an otherwise sparkling skyline.
“In probably 1993 or 1994 my dad and I went down to the north lot of the Kingdome and walked the space with a measuring wheel,” Deegan said. “We were convinced the bones of a park could fit tightly into the Pioneer Square backdrop and we imagined our own Camden Yards with the clock tower of King Street Station in centerfield.”
Deegan spent his free time as a youth designing, drawing and thinking about ballparks, creating hundreds of sketches he still has today. And though the Mariners never built that stadium in Pioneer Square, he’s liked the 1999-opened T-Mobile Park enough to sink a significant amount of time bringing it down to Lego scale.
Deegan didn’t start with a plan. He didn’t design or render anything digitally, he just started putting the thing together, piece by piece through trial and error. A while back he took on a similar project with a Lego version of Huskey Stadium. He estimates T-Mobile took twice the time.
“Build a section, tear it back down. Do it better. It’s a three-dimensional puzzle that I’m imagining in my head and building in real time,” he said. “Part of the appeal of Lego is the constraints. Figuring out how to solve a challenge with only the pieces available to me, and working within those limitations to articulate and express shapes that don’t yet exist.”
It’s let history repeat itself a bit, too. Just as Deegan spent his youth marveling over parks with his father, Deegan’s daughter has been a consistent help through the building process.
“This one was fun because I can play side by side with my daughter,” he said. “We build in 20 minute bursts before she loses her attention for it and I have to come back late at night to keep going.”
The roof nags at him a bit, though. There’s so much of the stadium he loves — especially the Northwest entrance with the ramp, stairs, player banners and glove statue.
He just wishes the roof could automatically retract.
“I had grand designs for the roof utilizing train tracks and an app-controlled motion battery,” he said. “But the roof itself is so heavy and wants to buckle. As soon as I finished the build my brain went immediately to, ‘Ok, next time.’”
— Tyson Alger
@tysonalger
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