In Macon, a new statue honors the 'Babe Ruth' of Muscogee stickball

A newly dedicated statue in Macon celebrates the life of a man whose family calls him the Babe Ruth of Muscogee stickball.

The 7-foot-tall bronze statue of Netche Cepvnkv Gray is only about a foot taller than he was in his prime and depicts him stretching skyward with his sticks for the Muscogee version of lacrosse. The statue is the second installed in Macon’s Bicentennial Park by Muscogee artist and sculptor Kenneth Johnson, who has memories of Gray from his very early childhood.

"I met Netche In the early 1970s," Johnson said. "I was only 5 years old — 5 or 6 — but he was married to my cousin. And my cousin was best friends with my great-grandma. So she was always over there visiting. And I was always worried about this tall man. He's about 6-foot-3, 6-foot-4. And I worried about that tall man in the black hat."

Johnson’s art in Macon is part of an ongoing effort by the city and the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma to reaffirm connections between the nation and their traditional homelands in Georgia.

Johnson said the 900-pound figure mounted on 2,900 pounds of Georgia granite is meant to honor someone he called the "epitome of a man that was acknowledged by his peers and by the community."

"I only knew him as a child, but to understand what he did as a man, as a culture bearer, as someone who continued our Muscogee ways?" Johnson said. "We wanted to acknowledge him in bronze and in art, and as a speaking point to anybody who comes here."

Johnson spoke to descendants of Gray to fill in the gaps in his memory while designing the work. Some of them, such as Joe Sulphur, 76, were present for the unveiling of the statue ahead of the annual Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration at the nearby Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park.

Like his grandfather, Sulphur dedicated much of his life to traditional Muscogee ball games.

"Well, I've survived about 70 years of them," he said with a chuckle. "And they asked me if I was going to play next year and I said, 'Try and stop me.'"

Like Johnson, Sulphur remembered his grandfather as larger than life.

"He was like a celebrity back in the day," he said. "He was kind and would take the time out to talk to you, sing to you whatever you needed. Whatever you needed to help you get along the way."

Sulphur said Gray towered over most other players on the ball field and he understood from an early age just what a link to Muscogee tradition his grandfather embodied.

"I started playing in 1955," Sulphur said. "I played with him when I was a young man. I said I was proud that he served in World War I. He said, 'When I were your age, I played guys that were in the Civil War.'"

Sculptor Kenneth Johnson faced the statue of Gray toward the west and Oklahoma, to which the Muscogee Nation was forcibly removed fewer than three decades before the Civil War. The statue also faces space in Bicentennial Park set aside for a stickball field.

Sulphur said the pose of the statue — arms outstretched, towering — is one he remembers seeing when his grandfather played ball.

"And I have seen guys beating on his head and shoulders and arm trying to take the ball away from him," Sulphur said.

But Sulphur said Netche Cepvnkv Gray would never turn down a good ball game.