Bruce Hellerstein believes light from Ebbets Field can help make him whole again.
Hellerstein’s wife, Judy Frieman, from heart complications. Her passing left the owner of LoDo’s National Ballpark Museum in an emotional spiral as he grappled with how to properly honor Judy. She was a critical partner in her husband’s mission to showcase the majors’ original 14 classic ballparks, and the history of baseball in Denver, at the museum.
So over the last year, Hellerstein decided to cement his late wife’s legacy via baseball. His conduit to doing so was Ebbets Field, perhaps the most beloved ballpark ever and the home to the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Hellerstein recently finished an Ebbets Field honorarium room for Judy at the museum, complete with rare artifacts, glass cases filled with memories of Judy’s diehard fandom, and the couple’s wedding picture. That photo is centered on the wall beneath a crossed-bats light fixture that hung over a ticket window in the , and the honorarium also has a baseball globe from the rotunda’s chandelier.
“I wanted to honor Judy in a sacred way,” Hellerstein explained. “I thought, ‘What could be better than having these historical light fixtures from the marble rotunda at Ebbets Field?’ If you turn off the main (ceiling) light, and just have the two rotunda lights on, it just gives such a reverence to the room.
“It’s like her memory’s in a Church of Baseball. ‘Bull Durham’ starts out as a religion, and it’s the same thing for me and Judy. She just loved it so much.”
The missing piece
Hellerstein had been working on putting together the museum’s Ebbets Field room for about seven years, but Judy’s death was the impetus for completing the project.
The room already had several featured mementos, including the baseball globe which Hellerstein acquired decades ago and restored after an electrician installing the light dropped it, shattering it into hundreds of pieces. The room also has a diorama of Ebbets Field signed by Vin Scully, a replica gold railing from the stadium, from when the venue was torn down and a Jackie Robinson No. 42 retired number circle (acquired from Cleveland’s Progressive Field).
But it was missing the crossed-bats light fixture, a piece that Hellerstein had bought, sold, and then bought again four times over the years.
That’s been a common trend in Hellerstein’s collecting, which began with a display in his basement and eventually led to opening the National Ballpark Museum at its present location on Blake Street in 2010. He would often sell one piece of memorabilia to pay for another he wanted, or sometimes sell pieces to pay the museum’s rent.
Hellerstein managed to re-acquire the crossed-bats light fixture in May, about a year after Judy’s death, and just days before the piece was going to be sold to another collector instead. Hellerstein didn’t want to reveal how much he paid for it, but says it’s the most expensive piece of memorabilia in the entire museum and that the most recent price was several times what he originally paid for it many years ago.
“I’d been trying to get it back all this time and then after she died, it was a no-brainer,” Hellerstein said. “The room had to have that lamp in there. Otherwise, the room would not be close to what it is. It is the most important piece in my entire museum. And it’s obviously my favorite piece.”
‘The perfect baseball pairing’
The honorarium is emblematic of how baseball underscored Bruce and Judy’s marriage.
The two divorcees met in their 60s on the Jewish dating website Jdate, and Bruce’s interest was piqued by Judy’s bio: “Take me to any ballpark, and I’m in heaven.” Judy’s username on the site was “Bat Girl,” which some mistook for the comic book character. But Bruce knew it was a reference to America’s pastime.
The couple was together for about a decade, and married for eight years after Bruce proposed to Judy during a Rockies spring training game at Salt River Field in Scottsdale. In their time together, they visited approximately 30 ballparks, including three World Series and an array of independent-league stadiums, minor-league venues, and amateur fields.
“She opened up all these new worlds for me in the game,” Hellerstein said. “I never went to Arizona Fall League, but Judy took me there. Same with the California Winter League. She took me to the Chicago Dogs of the American Association. We practically lived up in Boulder during the summers watching the (collegiate summer league team) Collegians play, just us next to parents and girlfriends of the players.
“During the pandemic, we drove up to Kersey, Colorado, so we could watch high school kids play in the only baseball going on at that time in the state. We went all over this place, fueled by our love and our love for the game together.”
Ed Henderson, an MLB scout and longtime friend of the couple, called Bruce and Judy “the perfect baseball pairing.”
“Bruce is an absolute baseball fanatic, but when he met Judy, he told me, ‘Ed, I know a lot about baseball, but my wife knows a hell of a lot more,'” Henderson recalled with a laugh.
“I remember sometimes talking to Judy about statistics and details on players, and I don’t know in the last 20 years if I’ve known anybody that had more knowledge of the background of players and teams than she did. I would have never wanted to get into a baseball trivia contest with her, because she would have kicked my (butt).”
Honoring a legacy
Judy’s passion for the game extended to the museum, which she helped run and often supported financially.
“She came through big time for me, and that was another reason I knew I needed to create the honorarium,” Hellerstein said. “There’d be no museum without Judy. It’s that simple. This was our museum together.”
This year, Hellerstein says the museum is “busier than ever,” as it’s on pace for around 2,000 visitors, approximately double the number from three years ago. About 95% of the museum’s visitors are out-of-towners, and Hellerstein sees huge upticks of foot traffic during homestands at Coors Field, as well as during other notable local events that bring tourists to the city.
And in the museum’s quiet moments in between, Hellerstein’s made a habit of going into the Ebbets Field room, turning off the ceiling light, and basking in the glow of the orbs in baseball’s most famous rotunda. While the Mets’ Citi Field , Coors Field’s main entrance emulates it, too — an idea that Hellerstein had when he was on the stadium’s design committee in the early 1990s.
“When I’m in that room with the rotunda lights on, she’s with me and I’m with her,” Hellerstein said. “Beyond our baseball memories, it helps me remember what an incredible human being she was. And to me, it’s important to share that with everybody.
“I’m still grieving big-time, but her legacy in this museum means everything to me. If I didn’t do the honorarium, there’d be a huge hole in my life. Getting that (ticket-window) lamp completed the museum, completed the honorarium — and I have completeness within myself now, too.”
