Fowlerville will soon honor hometown hero and baseball legend Charlie Gehringer with a mural after winning a $25,000 grant from the Consumers Energy Foundation.
In March, the village entered Consumers’ Put Your Town on the Map Competition, which provides $50,000 in grant funding for three projects across Michigan.
Fowlerville received the top prize of $25,000 for a proposed mural of Gehringer.
Gehringer was born in Fowlerville in 1903, according to his biography from the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He spent his entire 19-year career in Major League Baseball with the Detroit Tigers as a second baseman, playing 1924-1942.
Gehringer, also known as “The Mechanical Man,” was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1949. He played in more than 2,200 games in his career, according to the Hall of Fame. In 1937, he won the American League batting title and was named Most Valuable Player over Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio.
Gehringer died on Jan. 21, 1993, in Bloomfield Hills at age 89. He still has family in Livingston County.
According to Village Manager and Clerk Kathy Rajala-Gutzki, the mural will be painted on the EMS building next to Centennial Park, where Gehringer played baseball growing up. The building at 200 N. Grand St. was previously owned by the Fowlerville Area Fire Department, before being purchased by Livingston County EMS in 2023.
Rajala-Gutzki said there’s no current timeline for when the mural will be complete, but an artist has been selected and a draft of the mural is available for residents to see in the chambers at Fowlerville Village Hall.
— Contact reporter Tess Ware at tware@livingstondaily.com.
This article originally appeared on Livingston Daily: Fowlerville wins $25K grant for mural of Charlie Gehringer. Here’s where it’ll go
Reporting by Tess Ware, Livingston Daily / Livingston Daily
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