[Scott Garner]

I was very happy to pick up Johnny Vander Meer's personal copy of his 1938 Players Contract with the Reds from the Seth Swirsky collection. This was the year Vander Meer threw consecutive back-to-back no-hitters.

An interesting side note is that I actually now own two Vandy 1938 contracts:

It's not widely known that Vandy had TWO contracts in 1938. The one that I purchased early last year was issued in January, 1938 and was a monthly contract for $500 a month. The Reds let Vandy know that if he was still on the roster by the All star break that they would issue him an annual contract. By late May it had become obvious that Vandy was pitching well enough in 1938 to warrant issuing the second contract. As a show of good faith, Warren Giles tore up the monthly contract that Vandy started out the year a month early and issued him the 2nd contract for $4,000 a year. This was the contract that Seth Swirsky owned and I just won. It's pretty neat because it preceded his unprecidented back-to-back no-hitter feat by a couple of weeks and marked the acknowlegement that he was a bona-fide major leaguer and was there to stay...