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Enjoy, Lanie To view the entire article, go to http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/local_regional/sudbbabespiano02242002.htm ____________________________________________________________ <PF> Divers search for Babe Ruth's piano in Sudbury pond By Matthew Fisher Sunday, February 24, 2002 <!MW-LONW!> <!SUMM!>SUDBURY - Divers struck out yesterday in their first attempt to recover a piano Babe Ruth is said to have pitched into a Sudbury pond 83 years ago.<!ENDSUMM!> A six-man dive team - volunteers from the Quincy Police Search and Rescue Team - used scuba gear and underwater video cameras, but found no evidence of the piano after searching the freezing-cold Willis Pond for four hours yesterday. The baseball great, then a pitcher with the Boston Red Sox, allegedly threw the piano into the pond during a drunken outburst while staying at a Sudbury cottage in 1918. Ruth was living in a Butler Road cottage near the pond after the 1918 championship season, according to Sudbury historian Curt Garfield. "It was a place where baseball players raised hell and partied without being noticed," Garfield said According to local legend, Ruth picked up his friend's piano, carried it outside and heaved it off the deck, where it tumbled down a small hill and splashed into the pond about 50 feet away. Since then, the piano has become a symbol of both Ruth's wild lifestyle and his superhuman strength. "Muscled hero that he was, I think he threw it as a demonstration of his strength," said Kevin Kennedy, a Sudbury resident and teacher for the Restoration Project, which hopes to refurbish the piano. The Acton-based Restoration Project trains people recovering from mental illnesses to restore furniture. If the piano is in the pond, the search team thinks it is less than 50 feet away from the shore. If the piano is positively identified, an excavation permit would be needed to retrieve it later. "We're confident we can save it and play it again," said Kennedy, a local upholsterer. "Wouldn't that be something? The last person to play this piano was Babe Ruth. Who knows, it could end up at Fenway Park." Five divers were forced to conduct a blind search Saturday because visibility was poor, said Chris Hugo, who works with the state Board of Underwater Archaeological Research. They didn't locate the piano but said they'll return in a couple of weeks with advanced metal detectors and possibly sonar scopes. Organizers say this is no Geraldo Rivera-Al Capone vault misadventure - they have proof the piano is there. On Dec. 22, Hugo used an infrared camera and identified a "rectangular shape with wiry weeds" at the bottom, 15 feet below the surface and near shore. Eloise Newell, the director of the Restoration Project, pledged to keep looking for the piano. "We're not going to give up," she said. "We're going to find it." One theory, Newell said, is that the piano sank into the mud under the pond. Kennedy said there are other motivations, besides a furniture project, to unearth the piano. Because the Red Sox have not won a World Series since 1918, many New Englanders believe the team lives under the "Curse of the Bambino," which fans attribute to Ruth's sale to the hated New York Yankees after the 1919 season. "Something has been over the Red Sox - a dark cloud - for many years," Kennedy said. Kennedy first found out about the piano from a group of children who were playing baseball at Sudbury's Haskell Field. His interest piqued, Kennedy started researching the incident, calling everyone from Garfield to the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore. He unearthed photos of Ruth at the cottage, and letters referring to singing around the piano and a nearby 15-foot incline. Kennedy then went a step further. He knew a builder named "Joyce" built the cottage Ruth rented, but there were four along the lake. A search at the Registry of Deeds in Cambridge turned up a map showing the Joyce cottage was the one they suspected Ruth rented. Ruth was famous during the Roaring '20s for his fast lifestyle, filled with drinking, womanizing and partying. Ruth spent his off-seasons in Sudbury, raising chickens and pit bulls at his farm on Dutton Road, where he bought a home two years after his piano-tossing escapade. Kennedy told Newell about the piano, and the two decided it would be a perfect project for the group. The Restoration Project obtained a permit from the state to conduct the search, since Willis Pond is state-owned. Although state officials could lay claim to the piano, the Restoration Project would hold preservation rights, and might donate the piano to the Babe Ruth Museum, Newell said. About 150 people have worked with the Restoration Project during its 10-year history. Thanks to modern medicine, more people who suffer from depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses are able to rejoin society, Newell said. The project helps ease them into the community by giving them a relatively stress-free, but productive, paying job. "Restoration Project is a means to an end," Newell said. "Working with your hands is therapeutic. It grounds you." </PF> ____________________________________________________________ News you need, from metrowestdailynews.com e-news Get the top headlines of the day delivered right to your e-mail in-box with metrowestdailynews.com e-news. It's free, and it's easy to sign up. Stay on top of the news you want - in sports, business, local news and opinions, entertainment and more! 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