Mastro Auctions -- Black Sox information on their next auction

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Posted By: Rich Klein

From a post I read in a SABR group. If this information is true, kudos to Mastro for understanding that although the original documents have value; the historical value of these documents is well worth the small investment in making sure researchers such as the man who posted this information below has access to this as well. Please see all below for the copied post

Regards
Rich

Another line borrowed from Paul Harvey for the occasion.

I don't have all the details, but I was recently contact by the Cooperstown library, then by a reporter from the Chicago Tribune, regarding a collection of documents, much of which seems to be related to the B-Sox. This collection will be going to auction (not in pieces, but all together -- starting bid $5,000) later this month, via Mastro Auctions, located in a Chicago suburb, but the auction may be conducted via the internet. I visited the Mastro site, but it's not listed yet.

From what I gathered, talking to the reporter who had seen the collection and was trying to identify the various documents, it looks like the material may include stuff from the 1920 grand jury, the 1921 trial, and the 1924 trial. I don't want to get anybody's hopes up falsely -- but it may even include the transcript from 1921 -- which I thought was gone and given up for good back when Asinof hit the B-Sox trail in 1961. A document partially read to me sounded like a response from MLB owners to the original Lasker Plan -- after the scandal, but before Landis, so probably Oct/Nov 1920. Another document seemed to be the detective report (Hunter -- he was Comiskey's hired sleuth) on Happy Felsch, from November 1919. If I was to guess -- I'd guess that this collection has been tucked away in the law firm that was Alfred Austrian's in 1919. The same firm that released the Jackson grand jury statement, in 1988. This has the potential to contain not just another small piece of the B-Sox puzzle, but a LOT of pieces, and some big ones.

The other bit of news, that sounds too good to be true, is that it looks like the Mastro people will photocopy everything for the National Baseball Library (Cooperstown). So if it is purchased at auction by a private collector with no interest in the history, or by a sheik in Saudi Arabia -- we still might be able to see it for research purposes.

Anyway, look for something in the news, when the Chi Trib decides to go public, hopefully soon. But maybe not, the reporter with whom I talked, at length, was clearly getting more and more hooked on the subject as we spoke.