Cumberland History Teacher’s New Book Pays Tribute to the PawSox

Murals of McCoy was published in October 2023. (Cover design by Courtney Coutu)

Editor’s note: Bruneau & Co. Auctioneers has announced an auction of the original player murals painted by Tayo Heuser on Monday, March 18, 2024, at noon at the auction house in Cranston. The forty-two murals previously owned by antiques dealer Gary Sullivan will be auctioned off. More information is available here.

When the news broke back in 2018 that the Pawtucket Red Sox were officially leaving Rhode Island for a new stadium in Worcester, the questions began to swirl.

What would happen to the iconic stadium, home to the longest game of baseball ever played? Who would fill the slot as the state’s de facto summer team? Would anyone actually travel up to Worcester to catch a game?

But for Andy Tuetken, a Smithfield resident and high school history teacher in Cumberland, there was only one thing on his mind: What would happen to the murals?

Tuetken had grown up attending games with his dad and brother, watching players move up the ranks. Later, he and his wife brought their two daughters to games at McCoy, reliving the family tradition with a new generation.

“The first thing we’d do is walk up the concourses and look at the beautiful murals. I loved listening to my dad tell stories about them,” Tuetken recalls.

The players were all there: Carlton Fisk and Jim Rice, Roger Clemens and Mike Greenwell, and the newer greats — names like Nomar Garciaparra, Tim Wakefield and Mo Vaughn.

The murals had been a crucial part of Tuetken’s memories, a game-day ritual that made legends of the past seem like they were present on the field. So when he heard the stadium would be demolished, he knew he had to find out more about them and do what he could to preserve their memory for generations of PawSox fans.

“It might sound strange, but it was just the process of being able to accept that the PawSox weren’t going to be in Rhode Island anymore. McCoy stadium had been such an intricate part of my young life with my parents always taking my brother and I to games,” Tuetken says.

He started his research with Brendan McGair, a sports reporter for the Pawtucket Times and Woonsocket Call Tuetken knew from their interactions on the local youth sports scene. McGair introduced him to Louriann Mardo-Zayat, a former team photographer for the PawSox who’d also had a career in the news business. Mardo-Zayat had taken the digital player photographs that had hung on the concourse since 2002. One connection let to another, and soon, he and Mardo-Zayat were inside McCoy Stadium, documenting the portraits that still hung — albeit weather-damaged — on the concourse walls.

The more he discovered, the more he wanted to know. Digging deeper, Tuetken learned the idea for the murals had come from Ben Mondor shortly after he purchased the PawSox in 1977. Mondor hired a young artist fresh from the Rhode Island School of Design, Tayo Heuser, to paint murals of the players directly on the concourse walls. When those walls had to be sandblasted during a renovation in the 1990s, she was again hired to repaint forty-five murals on wooden boards hanging in the concourse. The murals stayed up until the early 2000s, when they were sold at auction and replaced with digital prints.

Speaking with team officials up in Worcester, Tuetken learned most of the painted murals had been purchased by a single buyer. His research led him to a warehouse in Seekonk, where antiques dealer Gary Sullivan had purchased them from the original buyer and was now preparing to sell them again. Heuser, who also created the statue of Ben Mondor unveiled in 2012, joined Tuetken and Mardo-Zayat for a visit to the warehouse, where forty-two of the murals still sat.

Antiques dealer Gary Sullivan, artist Tayo Heuser, Andy Tuetken, photographer Louriann Mardo-Zayat and original mural buyer Philip Zexter pictured in the warehouse with Heuser’s original murals. (Photo courtesy of Andy Tuetken)

“She said she hadn’t talked about the murals in twenty years, but was thrilled with the idea,” Tuetken recalls.

With the help of his new allies on the project, Tuetken gathered depictions of the ninety-five player murals — both the original murals painted by Tayo and the player photographs taken by Mardo-Zayat — and arranged them chronologically. The resulting book, Murals of McCoy, was published last fall to the delight of PawSox fans. Though he didn’t set out to publish a book, Tuetken says his wife encouraged him as his research continued to grow.

“I love research. All my research just ends up on a shelf in my house. Once I find what I was looking for, I move on to the next subject,” he says.

The 216-page book includes ninety-five former PawSox players along with their statistics and accomplishments. Though ten of the murals were missing and could not be tracked down, Tuetken was able to substitute images from their team-issued player cards.

“I’ve been blown away so far at how many people have reached out and told me the same thing that they felt, that’s what they remember,” he says.

What started out as an effort to gain closure and preserve the murals before the stadium is torn down to make way for a new high school became a much larger journey. Tuetken says he had no idea how many other people shared his love for the murals and considered them part of the PawSox legacy.

“I realized I wasn’t the story at all. I’m just the one telling it. What the story is is those murals and what they mean to others and what those memories will bring out in them,” he says.

In a fitting tribute for a team that was home to so many summer memories for young people of all backgrounds and income levels, Tuetken plans to donate all of the profits from the self-published book to youth baseball in Pawtucket.

“I’m sad it’s over, but I’m happy it’s over as well,” he says.

Murals of McCoy is available to purchase on Amazon.

Tuetken and his family at their final PawSox game. (Photo courtesy of Andy Tuetken)

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