PORTLAND (AP) – Some artists put blood, sweat and tears into their work. A large sculpture cost Rhoda Sherbell a sore neck and a broken rib.

Rhoda Sherbell, creator of a baseball-themed statue to be unveiled Monday, was hit by a foul ball while attending a game at Hadlock Field looking for inspiration for a sculpture she was commissioned to create by Sea Dogs owner Daniel Burke and his wife, Bunny.

The ball bounced off her neck as she was taking pictures with a camera. Someone grabbed it and returned it to her because “she earned it.”

The team’s players autographed the ball for her.

But that’s not the worst of it. While she was working underneath the original clay sculpture, which depicts a family of four heading to a baseball game, the 300-pound baby girl fell on Sherbell and broke her rib. First she felt pain, then she felt relief because the sculpture didn’t break. “I said, ‘Oh, thank God.’ It was intact,” she said.

The final product, cast in bronze and weighing 1.5 tons, was to be unveiled outside Hadlock Field at 10 a.m. Monday.