LOL I agree Steve.
If I know now what I knew then I would have just taken everything home with me. I remember seeing old glass negatives from the Bears, correspondence to Robert Lewis from various baseball executives, heck we even found a box of fan mail to Leo Durocher from when he was the Cubs manager during the 60's. Much of this stuff got dumped and will never see the light of day again.
I do have to say that some stuff they did not throw out were player contracts. While looking for something one day I went into the janitors closet and noticed a number of filing cabinets. I opened a drawer and couldnt believe that I was looking at player contracts. One of the other guys I knew who was into baseball history as much as I was spent a Saturday in the off season just looking at these contracts. As far as we could tell there were contracts going all the way back to the 20's in these cabinets. I held Ernie Banks' 1st contract in my hands. I looked at Kiki Cuylers contracts and saw Roger Hornsby's last contract. I was totally in awe of what we were looking at and vowed if they ever tossed those out, I would be all over them. Thankfully, they never did toss them out and realized their value and have now taken steps to store them in a way that will not ruin them
I had a few people suggest to me that I should have taken a few as they would have never known. I mean, the Banks' rookie contract could have probably bought me a new car or more but honestly, taking any of these never entered my mind. I was just in so much awe of what I was holding that to have that memory was worth it to me.
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