Hey, he was a big guy

Richard Sandomir has an article in The New York Times about baseball:

After George Steinbrenner’s death in July, the Yankees and his family discussed how they would remember him in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium. They chose the wide space on the rear granite wall that separates two groups of modest plaques. It is an expanse big enough to fit an enormous bronze likeness, and that is exactly what has been placed there.
At 7 feet wide and 5 feet high, the Steinbrenner plaque dwarfs the ones flanking it, and also towers over the gravestonelike monuments to Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio, which are in front of Steinbrenner, and those to Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Miller Huggins, which are in a separate section of the park.
The plaque is so big it has sparked a debate. On The New York Times’ Bats blog, numerous people weighed in with derisive comments, describing the memorial as crass, ostentatious, preposterous, gargantuan and egomaniacal. Some who were critical identified themselves as Yankees fans: “So Steinbrenner is bigger than the Babe?” asked one commenter. “Bigger than Gehrig?”
“The size of one’s ego shouldn’t determine the size of one’s monument,” another commenter said.
“I appreciate what George did for the Yankees, but even if you choose to ignore all the bad stuff that went with it, the size of the plaque is laughable,” said a third.
A much smaller group of commenters agreed with Randy Levine, the Yankees’ president, that the plaque was an appropriate celebration of Steinbrenner for the way he transformed the team on his 37-year watch: “It represents George,” Levine said. “He was a force. He built the stadium. He took the Yankee brand to places nobody else did. We don’t look at it in comparison to Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, or Joe DiMaggio. They were unbelievable Yankees, but George was larger than life, and you needed something that represented that spirit.”
Monument Park has rarely received so much publicity. In fact, until 1985, it did not exist as it does now, as a place for fans to pass through. Honoring Yankees greats began in 1932 with the placement of a monument for Huggins, the team’s first great manager, in faraway center field; it was joined in 1941 by one for Gehrig and in 1949 by another for Ruth. The three memorials, and a flagpole, created an obstacle course for outfielders when the rare ball in play ended up rattling around out there.
The center-field wall actually became the first gallery of plaques, with one for the former owner Jacob Ruppert mounted in 1940, followed by one for Edward Barrow, the team’s top executive, nine years later. Twenty years after that, plaques for Mantle and DiMaggio were added.
“On Mickey Mantle Day in 1969, DiMaggio presented Mantle’s plaque and Mantle presented DiMaggio with one,” said Marty Appel, the Yankees’ former publicity director who is writing a history of the team. “And Mickey said, ‘If I’m going to have a plaque on the outfield wall, then Joe’s got to have one hanging a little higher than mine.’ And I made sure DiMaggio’s was an inch higher.”
After the stadium’s 1974-75 renovation, the three monuments and the plaques were moved beyond the outfield wall; according to the team’s media guide, the spot was inaccessible to fans. But in 1985, when the center-field fence was moved in, a fan-friendly attraction opened.
“George named it Monument Park, created the tours, and had a beautiful brick floor put in,” Appel said of Steinbrenner.
The park was relocated to the new stadium last season, and now it has a new centerpiece, the Steinbrenner plaque, which weighs 1,500 pounds in all, counting its base. Examined up close, it gave off the appearance of a sun surrounded by its satellites. On one side of Steinbrenner are the plaques honoring Yogi Berra, Reggie Jackson, Elston Howard, Lefty Gomez, Bob Sheppard, and others. On the other side, the plaques include ones honoring Ron Guidry, Phil Rizzuto, Whitey Ford, Mel Allen, Casey Stengel, and Roger Maris.
Fans on a regularly scheduled tour of the monument area seemed impressed, even if many others are not: “It is large, but he was the man for almost forty years,” said Lexie Fulton, of Bristol, Connecticut.
“He brought the team back to life,” said Charlie Symon, of Beacon, New York. “He was a unique man who did a lot for the Yankees.”
Tom Jorishie, who owns a tiny piece of the Arizona Diamondbacks, said, “It’s a beautiful monument to a great guy.”
About a week after Steinbrenner’s death on 13 July, the Yankees approached U.S. Bronze, of New Hyde Park, New York, about creating a Steinbrenner memorial. But work could not begin until the Yankees submitted the written tribute that is inscribed on the plaque. The work began a month ago, said Peter Kasten, the sales manager for U.S. Bronze. “It’s hard to capture a good likeness in a glob of clay, but I think it really captured his look,” he said of the Steinbrenner plaque. U.S. Bronze’s foundry has produced nearly all the plaques in Monument Park, and also created the statue of Steinbrenner now in the lobby of Gate 2. Kasten said he was unaware of any debate about the size of the Steinbrenner plaque as it was being constructed. “It almost looks like they were preserving the space for him,” he said.
In a vague way, they were. “I don’t know if anyone ever said we’d save the space for him, but it was floating out there as a concept,” said Lonn Trost, the Yankees’ chief operating officer. He said that there were no conversations with Steinbrenner about the memorial. Trost and Deborah A. Tymon, the team’s senior vice president for marketing, said that one element of the concept for the Steinbrenner plaque was looking at the old ones of Ruppert and Barrow, which are mounted on front walls in Monument Park.
A number of photographs were considered by the Steinbrenner family before a final image was chosen. “One kept resurfacing as the one we liked best,” Tymon said.
Family members appeared to be moved by the plaque at its unveiling. And Trost said the plaque’s size was “appropriate to the location.” But big it is, as is the debate it has produced.