In an otherwise ordinary- looking condo in Buffalo Grove, an extraordinary man is completing work on a stunning replica of Boston’s Fenway Park.
What Steve Wolf does, often up to 16 hours a day, is not the kind of thing most of us understand. It is a solitary pursuit, an almost painfully meticulous process, an endeavor that might cause some to think of Wolf as an oddball.
He’s not nuts. “I love what I’m doing,” he says. “It’s a passion.”
He will tell you that on Sept. 30, 1990, he cried while watching the last game played in old Comiskey Park. This sorrowful event compelled him to begin what would become more than 1,000 hours creating a model of old Comiskey using balsa, hickory and pine wood, aluminum, acrylic glass, plaster, other materials and a lot of heart.
A graphic artist by trade, Wolf was, as a child of the South Shore neighborhood, in love with baseball and the making of models to embellish his train sets–little bridges, things like that.
The death of old Comiskey set loose his big-model building passions. He later made in miniature the bleachers at Wrigley. And then started a room-size model of the entire stadium, a task chronicled in a delightful film, “Wrigley Field: Beyond the Ivy,” made locally by Bougainville Productions, which previously made a film about the wrecking of old Comiskey.
The Wrigley film took four years to make and combines real and composite characters. Watching it gives one a sharp taste of some of the frustrations of Wolf’s calling: having to remove windows and brackets to get his Wrigley model out of his condo; being unable, for a time, to find a buyer.
He will soon complete his model of Fenway, which is the oldest ballpark still standing but is scheduled to be replaced by 2003. He hopes to find a buyer for this one as well.
Wolf eventually sold his Wrigley to Murphy’s Bleachers, the popular bar across the street from Wrigley where it remains on display for crowds well acquainted with baseball passions-and frustrations.
