[whitehse]

There was a time not long ago teams had no clue what they had and did nothing to secure their "stuff".

I worked for the Chicago Cubs right out of high school back in the early 80's and after getting moved up to the front office I found memorabilia all over the place. One night when I was the only person in the ball park because the security guard called in sick and I was asked to work, I found four file cabinets in the janitors closet. In those unlocked cabinets were players contracts. I remember looking through all of the cabinets and saw Ernie Banks rookie and other contracts. Contracts of Hornsby, Cuyler, Dean and all the greats were there. Sure, I toyed with the idea of taking one as nobody would know but I just could not pull the trigger as guilt would just kill me.

I have seen some things pop up in auctions I KNOW were in Wrigley but not secured. It was common practice to toss things out back then and I just wish I did some dumpster diving to save some of this stuff. I remember seeing a directive from Commishiner Uberroth saying teams needed to start preserving their history by saving documents, uniforms and anything that would mark the history of the team. It was a very cool time to work in MLB?