‘A Visionary Dream, Unrealized’: The Drawings of Michael Rakowitz

One long, bright August evening in 2006, Michael Rakowitz and I met on the South Side of Chicago to watch the Yankees play the White Sox. It seemed the most fitting way to celebrate Rakowitz’s move to Chicago after a life largely spent in New York, since both of us love baseball and he is a lifelong Yankees fan…One long, bright August evening in 2006, Michael Rakowitz and I met on the South Side of Chicago to watch the Yankees play the White Sox. It seemed the most fitting way to celebrate Rakowitz’s move to Chicago after a life largely spent in New York, since both of us love baseball and he is a lifelong Yankees fan. From our seats high above home plate we had a great view of the whole field. We relished the aesthetics of the game – not just the moments of athletic grace but also the poetry within minutiae: the awkward stances of some batters; the fielders’ strategic shifts of position over the course of an inning; the perfect wrist-flick that seals the double play.