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Posted By: Bill

For Sale

Extremely Rare First Edition ook Authored And Autographed By Joe Dimaggio!

Item Details:

Item: Book

Title: "Lucky to be a Yankee"

Author: Joe Di Maggio

Authors Alias: "The Yankee Clipper"

Publisher: Rudolph Field, New York

Publisher Distributors: Greenberg

Introduction Author: by James A. Farley

IntroDuction Author Alias: Nicknamed "The New Dealer".

In 1911, James A. Farley officially began his service as a politician when he was elected town clerk of Grassy Point.

After helping Alfred E. Smith become Governor of New York State , Farley served as port warden of NYC .

Farley was later appointed Chairman of the NYS Athletic Commission and became Boxing Commissioner of NYS from 1923 until the early 30's.

Farley also was named secretary of the Democratic State Committee in 1928. FDR asked Farley to run his 1928 campaign for New York governor.

In 1939, James A. Farley, current Postmaster-General of the United States, headed an array of distinguished fans in attendance for the centenial celebration of the game of baseball.

At the village post-office, just across the street from the Baseball Museum, the Postmaster-General in person began the circulation of a special baseball stamp, engraved to depict the scene of 100 years ago, showing Cooperstown boys on the village green playing the first game of baseball of which there is any record.

Farley campaigned to the voting participants in the annual awards made by the Baseball Writers Association, for Joe Di Maggio of the New York Yankees to be voted the most valuable player and leading batsman of the American League during the 1939 season.

Di Maggio ended the season with a batting average of .318. He hit 30 home runs and batted in a total of 128 runs.

Foreword: by Grantland Rice

Grantland Rice (November 1, 1880 - July 13, 1954) was an early 20th century American sportswriter.
1946

First Edition

PSA/DNA Authenticated

A Letter Of Authenticity (LOA) has been drafted by PSA/DNA personnel detailing the process of authentication for this item and also has embedded images of the book and autograph.

The LOA is signed by the head of authetication for PSA/DNA at the time of its submission and authentication.

Additional Noteworthy Details:

"Lucky to be a Yankee" was a ghosted autobiography.

"Lucky to be a Yankee" was originally published in 1946 by Rudolph Field.

In 1948 Bantam Books then began publishing the book.

After a tremendous amount of research through previously held auctions spanning most of the known and archived sports auction and specialty auction houses as well as, online aution markets such as eBay no other autographed copy of this book as a first edition has ever been recorded.

For more than 3 months I have been researching through hundreds of past auction catalogs, used data compiled by data from multiple Internet sales and maketing research companies, and personally contacted more than a dozen of the most well known Auction Houses and Sports Specific Auction Companies for any information relating to the sale of a First Edition Signed copy of this book.

I have only been able to find two records of the 1948 Bantam Published copy of this book which has been sold twice in the last 3 years at public or private auction.

Both books obtained winning bids above their reserves and both have not been re-auctioned since.

Although I could not get the name or exact doallar amounts for the winning bids, I was given figures for those sales that were provided as a minimum dollar amount reached for the items during the auctions. One was sold at over $1800.00 USD, while the other exceeded $2500.00 USD.

Through a little more research I found that both books were placed up for auction by Bauman Rare Books, a New Jersey Based Company but were sold or cataloged by their New York City office.

Bauman Rare Books accepts rare and fine books on consignment, as well as, purchases them outright for public, catalog subscription, private and auctoin sales.

"Lucky to be a Yankee" along with Bob Feller's "Strikeout Story" are considered to be the two best baseball autobiographies ever written.

Up until his death in 1999 Joe Di Maggio turned down nearly one hundred offers with some stretching beyond $2,000,000.00 USD to write his real life story.

"Lucky to be a Yankee" has been used by the University of Chicago as reading material in clinical trials during studies of learning by remedial students in language arts disciplines.