After a very long dryspell with my Lincoln minor league collection a guy showed up to my front door this morning with this beauty. It is a Bobby Shantz autographed baseball...but not just any old Bobby Shantz signed ball...this one was given to Jim Walters, the 16 year old kid who won the contest in 1953 to name the Lincoln baseball team...the ball is a NL Giles ball with the Western League president's signature stamp... I've known about this ball's existence for a long time now, but the guy was unwilling to sell it until today. The ball was also signed "Congratulations from Bill Hayes"...Hayes was the General Manager of the Lincoln club..he was a former Yankee minor leaguer and an umpire.
Here's a great story I found about Bill Hayes from just a few years ago:
http://www.amarillo.com/stories/0715..._7997379.shtml
The kid on the right in the bottom photo is the kid who named the team.