In wake of stolen Jackie Robinson statue, Wichita responds

WICHITA, KAN. -- At noon, when Bob Lutz left the old mechanic's garage that had been turned into the gleaming headquarters of the youth baseball league he founded, he liked to look across the street at the statue of Jackie Robinson.

There, in a pavilion celebrating the baseball Hall of Famer and civil rights icon, the bronze landmark stood in the park where children play in a league named after the Brooklyn Dodgers legend.

The Robinson statue was hard to miss, even on a foggy day this past January, when Lutz squinted through raindrops and asked his administrative assistant if she could see the 6-foot, 265-pound monument. For a closer look, she crossed E. 17th Street and headed over to McAdams Park, where League 42 plays its games and where the statue had stood since 2021.

Lutz said he never could have prepared himself fully for what she reported back to him.

"They'd cut [the statue] off at the feet," he recalled, "and it was gone."

Before he called police at 12:55 p.m. and began fielding all the media calls, Lutz did the only thing he could in that moment.

He cried.