Northside MLB mural’s days are numbered. Does the creator get a say in what’s next?

On North Main Street, a mural of Latino baseball legends towers over the sidewalk, spray painted in vivid color on a brick building a few doors down from historic cultural center Artes de La Rosa. 

Yovani Gallardo winds up for a pitch. Adolis Garcia looks over the neighborhood, where Gallardo grew up. Soon, the artwork featuring those legends and others could be painted over.

The mural on the 1400 block of North Main Street, created by Fort Worth muralist Juan Velazquez and collaborators Armando Aguirre and Duane Guerrero ahead of the 2024 MLB All-Star Game at Arlington’s Globe Life Field, celebrates the Northside community and the Latino players it nurtured. The building was purchased in May by Alan Sanchez, who founded the Texas-based cowboy hat company Alan’s Lids in 2020. He plans to convert the space into the brand’s first Fort Worth storefront. 

Sanchez said the mural will come down sometime between November and February, when the construction on the new store is expected to wrap.

“Murals aren’t made to be forever,” Sanchez said. “I wish they were, but it’s part of life.”

Both Velazquez and Sanchez agree the mural belongs somewhere in Northside, but negotiations over a replacement fell apart after the two could not come to terms on Velazquez’s commission or cost of a move.

Velazquez said he posted about the potential removal of the artwork on social media not to upset the community, but to give people a chance to see it before it’s gone.

“I decided to just tell people so that one day it wouldn’t be just gone and nobody knew about it,” Velazquez said.

The mural, which debuted in July 2024, was commissioned by the Rangers and Major League Baseball. Beyond Garcia and Gallardo, who both played for the Rangers, it features team legend and National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez, along with images depicting a young player’s path from T-ball to the pros. Velazquez said he used real images from players at North Side High School so that kids in the community could see themselves in the art.

“I wanted people to see themselves in the mural,” Velazquez said. 

Sanchez said he reached out to Velazquez last September, before the sale was finalized, to let him know the mural would likely be painted over and to offer him a commission to paint the replacement. He also raised the possibility of helping cover costs to relocate the existing mural to another spot in the neighborhood.

“If it really means a lot to the community, I’m more than happy to relocate that mural,” Sanchez said.

Velazquez said he was offered too little. Sanchez said Velazquez’s asking price was too high, and that other muralists had already reached out expressing interest in the project. 

“I feel like there should always be a middle ground,” Sanchez said. “I didn’t lowball him to a drastic amount.”

Velazquez said his plan had been to use the commission payment to self-fund moving the original mural to another location in Northside, possibly near the high school baseball field.

“I might still paint it somewhere else if I get an opportunity to do it self-funded,” he said. “I just don’t have the resources to do it right now, but it might be something that I do later on in the year.”

Sanchez, who was born in Cleburne, said his father is originally from Northside. He wants the new mural to reflect his Mexican and Texan roots, and envisions imagery tied to his cowboy hat business. 

He also pushed back on the notion that the mural is being admired to the fullest in its current location, adding it deserves a more visible home.

“If it deserves to be repainted, it deserves to be repainted in the right location where it’s going to be appreciated,” Sanchez said.

Aguirre, who helped Velazquez paint the MLB mural two weeks ahead of a tight All-Star Week deadline, said its potential loss is personal regardless of the circumstances. 

“The all-nighters that we pulled just to get the mural done on time, the effort put into it, it’s not just like we go up there and magically get it done,” Aguirre said.

Aguirre, who is from Dallas and has been doing mural work across DFW for about six years, said he sees the mural as carrying a message beyond baseball.

“Sticking with what you love, seeing it all the way through, having this dream and holding on to it, that’s how I viewed the mural,” he said. “Because you see something outside of yourself, it makes you believe more in yourself.”

The Northside situation is unfolding alongside a separate, high-profile legal dispute in Dallas, where artist Wyland filed a $25 million federal lawsuit after the city’s iconic Whaling Wall was painted over to make way for a FIFA World Cup mural. That case centers on the federal Visual Artists Rights Act, which in some cases required building owners to give artists 90 days notice before destroying a work attached to a building. 

Velazquez said he is uncertain whether he has any legal standing to fight his work’s removal but has decided not to pursue legal action.

He added that Northside is a neighborhood that needs more public art, not less and that communities like it, including Riverside and Eastside, have historically been underserved.

“I like to paint in those areas because I’m painting for a version of me as a kid somewhere,” Velazquez said.

Nicole Williams Quezada is a reporting fellow for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at [email protected].

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