Pristine Ruth/Wagner Signed Baseball Hidden in Grandma’s Drawer for 60 Years Now at Auction
By David Seideman
In the mid-1990s, a grandson was visiting his grandmother in San Pedro, California. At the time he was playing in an adult baseball league, which prompted her to tell him, “I have something for you.”
She then reached into a drawer and tossed him a clean, slightly toned baseball with writing as if it came from a playground. He looked at it and his eyes bugged out. In black fountain pen, there were the beautifully scripted signatures: Babe Ruth on the sweet spot and Honus Wagner on a side panel. If you were able to put in a request for a ball signed by any two players in history, this might be it.
For six decades, the grandmother had forgotten about the ball her late husband had acquired in the 1930s. It was the best keep secret in San Pedro, if not the sports collectible world. Her brother, children, and grandchildren were all in the dark about the existence of the slice of baseball history that had resided in their own family
In 2014, the ball went from the least known of its kind to the most known after five million viewers saw it featured on Antiques Roadshow.
Today it continues its epic odyssey. The ball is now on the market in the newly launched Lelands auction, running through March 16.
The signatures of Ruth and Wagner, two of the first five inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936, are seldom seen together on a baseball, and this may well be the finest such pairing in the hobby.
The baseball is an “Official Wilson League” bearing the stamped facsimile signature of “T. J. Hickey,” who served as American Association president, mostly from 1917 through 1935. In addition to the autographs of Ruth and Wagner, it also has signatures of Hall of Famer Al Simmons, one of the greatest hitters of his era who had a lifetime batting average of .334 and 2,927 hits, and George Earnshaw, a dominant pitcher during the early 1930s. Along with Lefty Grove, Earnshaw was one of the aces of the Philadelphia Athletics’ 1929-1931 baseball dynasty, winning 67 games during that three-year span.
The consignor’s grandfather had worked for the US Department of Agriculture as an inspector of ships and avidly played amateur baseball during the 1920s. Two of the ships he inspected were the Lurline and Watsonia, both of which traveled to the Hawaiian Islands. While the exact history of the ball is unknown, the family believes that the Ruth signature was most likely secured during Ruth’s postseason tour of Hawaii in 1933, because he traveled on the Lurline at the time. There is no record of the other three players traveling with Ruth to Hawaii back then and it was always assumed that their signatures were acquired independently on different seafaring trips during the same time period.
In 2014, Leila Dunbar, the well-respected independent appraiser and regular on Antiques Roadshow, couldn’t contain her excitement front of the TV cameras during the show’s taping in Charlottesville, VA. “It looks like it was signed yesterday!” she gushed “I have seen thousands of signed Ruth baseballs. This one, on a scale of one to ten, is a ten. The Honus Wagner is a ten. The ball is an eight. It’s creamy. It’s beautiful— the most spectacular signed baseball by Ruth and Wagner.”
For its part, Lelands grades the Ruth 9/10 the Wagner signature, 9.5/10, the Simmons signature 8/10, and the Earnshaw 8/10.
Dunbar gave the baseball an insurance value of $30,000 (insurance values run a little higher than actual values to cover losses). “I am shocked,” declared the grandson, now a retired government employee living in a small town in Virginia, who asked to remain anonymous. “I am floored.”
He was even more shocked in 2022 when the baseball was once again showcased on the show, where it earned an updated appraisal value of $80,000– almost three times the original one. “The Ruth autograph market has always been great, year after year,” says Tom D’Alonso, an acquisition specialist for Lelands who handled the consignment. “You don’t normally see a Wagner signature this nice on a baseball. Usually, you see it on a postcard or index card. Plus it’s a pretty rare combo. There are some induction balls. But there wouldn’t have been a lot of occasions when they were on the field together at the same time. You would have to go out of your way.”
After long thought, the consignor contacted Dunbar and the decision was made to sell it at auction through Lelands.
“I have two boys,” the 63-year-old explained. “One is a 28-year-old pilot in the Marine Corps. The other is intellectually delayed, 25, and works for a grocery store chain. Anything I can do for them has more meaning than a ball stuck in the drawer for 60 years.”
The holy relic’s long journey— from the Pacific Ocean, to the California coast, to national TV in Charlottesville, VA and up the eastern seaboard to auction — will now continue to an unknown destination and a happy new owner.
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