INDIANAPOLIS—Mike
Carmichael simply wanted to do something weird when he and his 3-year-old son
slapped a coat of blue paint on a baseball in 1977.
The central
Indiana resident stuck with painting the ball, which grew large enough to make
it to the Guinness Book of World Records in 2004.
At that time,
it was 9 feet (2.7 meters) across, and the record was an estimated 18,000
layers of paint. Now Carmichael, 68, figures he is at close to 25,000, although
he never set out to break records.
The ball now
measures 14 feet after Carmichael, his family, friends and even visitors added
more coats of paint over the last several decades. At its last weigh-in two
years ago, the sphere of ever-changing colors was about 5,000 pounds (2,268
kg).
"I was
always doing something weird, so I wanted something different to do,” said the
soft-spoken, self-employed painter. “We had no idea it was going to get this
big, this popular or this heavy.”
Carmichael
keeps the ball in a custom-built structure on his property in Alexandria, a
town of about 5,000 people about 40 miles northeast of Indianapolis.
The roadside
spectacle attracts about 1,200 visitors a year. Some just want to gawk, while
others, who call ahead and schedule an appointment, grab a paint brush and get
to work so they can claim a hand in the ongoing record. -end-
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