A Naperville man's tribute to Opening Day

Batter Up! Up on Naperville resident Leon Krejci's fence, that is.

Krejci, who has rekindled his love for art since retiring from the corporate world in 2006, has begun creating a series of paintings of prominent players in baseball history - just in time for Opening Day.

His completed works so far include oil paintings of Ernie Banks, Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio. Warren Spahn and "Gabby" Hartnett remain works in progress in Krejci's basement.

If the weather cooperates as the Major League Baseball season opens today, he intends to display his paintings on his fence facing Brookdale Drive, just east of Westminster Drive.

"It's a way to get people to see my work," he said. "But really it's just my own little tribute to Opening Day and the game I love."

Some might see the pieces, notice the lack of White Sox players and render Krejci a Cubs and/or Yankees fan. But he doesn't like to commit himself to a single team.

"If you truly love a game or a sport, you root for all the teams," he said. "I really am one of those guys who thinks it's OK to cheer for both the Cubs and the Sox."

Baseball isn't all he loves. He often spends six hours a day, seven days a week, in his basement studio turning out oil paintings, drawings and computer graphics.

The home he shares with his wife, Kathy, is a museum for his work. The interior includes a van Gogh room, an Edward Hopper room and an assortment of paintings in the family room.

In addition to his large-scale projects, he has done religious art, paintings of the model airplanes he builds, and assorted other subjects. His portraits of Lincoln were exhibited at Naper Settlement recently as part of the Lincoln bicentennial celebration and one was chosen for the cover of the Connecticut Lawyer journal.

"Painting is the easy part," he said. "Figuring out what to do with it next is always the hard part. So I decided to share my love for the game."