[Shoeless Moe]

I may have made the find of a lifetime on Ebay. At least my personal lifetime. To find hidden gems on Ebay requires hard work, luck, sellers non-knowledge of what they have, and an error on their part. In other words the Perfect Storm.

They listed this under Signed Photos. Big mistake. And the "signed" part may have knocked out any potential last minute snipers. More on that in a sec. So by listing this in the wrong category it eliminated pretty much any and all vintage baseball collectors. That helped me emensely.

I knew there would be last second bidding as always. The bidding was at $30 with under a minute to go. I normally wait until under 10 seconds to put my bid in, so as not to allow anyone to counter in time if I take the lead. But for some reason (I was anxious) I put my bid in at 12 seconds and good thing I did early cuz anyone familiar with buying signed items knows there is that screen that pops up let u knowing about the authenticity of signatures, blah blah blah.

So I had forgotten about that, but luckily clicked off it quickly and hit bid. If any of the competition were waiting til the last second that may have startled them and delayed getting their bid in on time. So more luck my way.

I enter a bid of $1200 and win the item for $76 dollars!!!

Game Used 1917 World Series Chicago White Sox vs New York Giants ball.

Now seeing this ball on Ebay you can never be sure if it's authentic and I knew that, but the seller did have a 7 day return policy, so I knew I was covered if it turned out to be fake.

Ball arrived today NDA and couldn't wait to open and determine if the ball was real or not. I've done research on Game Used World Series balls, some of which have appeared in Heritage and Lelands auctions. I have owned balls from the deadball era as well.

The seller also said there was writing on the other side of the ball. I couldn't make it out from the picture on Ebay, but was obviously hoping for a Shoeless Joe signature or something. Well I'm not that lucky. I wish. But the writing while faint in spots did seem to spell something. The last 3 letters were an obvious "rty". So I was hoping that was a last name of a Chicago player, but doubted it as I'm fairly familiar with their lineup, but went to Baseball reference .com NOTHING. So then I go chek out the Giants lineup. Bingo. 1 player. Lew McCarty.

I take a 2nd look at the ball and now I see Lew and the partial McCarty. So I'm stoked. Backup catcher for the Giants on the 1917 roster. It gets better.

I look at his bio, he died in Reading, PA. in 1930. A 1 hour drive from where the seller bought the ball in an estate sale. Yah yah I know the infamous estate sale ball. Well this seller I won't say his name but has a name like Orville and is very old and runs a floral shop with his wife, so I have no reason to think he would lie. So honest seller, who buys from estate auctions then sells on Ebay, they are out there.

So I find it so neat that the NL ball came from the East (makes sense), but to find that it came from an hour, possibly less, then where it the player lived and died to where the seller purchased reinforces any doubt.

So I then searched back up catcher Lew McCarty's WS stats, and he only saw action in 3 games in that series, and 2 were in Chicago, so that would have been an AL blue & red stitched ball, he played in only one game in New York (red & black stitched NL ball ), the 6th and final game!!!! I believe he took this ball from that deciding game 6 of the 1917 World Series! How friggin' neat is that, to be able to narrow it down to the exact game.

I am 100% certain this ball was used in the 1917 World Series featuring Shoeless Joe Jackson and Jim Thorpe.

I may send it to auction one day because I love the chase as much as I love owning stuff, but for now I just sit and stare at a ball most likely hit by and thrown around by Shoeless Joe Jackson. Today....Today....Today.....I consider myself the luckiest collector.....on the face of the earth.