Quote:
Originally Posted by packs
I thought I remember reading more than a few accounts from people who asked Mays to sign something multi-signed only to have him write over someone else's name. Imagine he did that to somebody's Ruth?
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Ha! Wow. Your post causes me to re-title this thread and tell my full story.
I'm from a small town north of San Francisco in the middle of nowhere, about 100 miles north of Candlestick Park. That spring or summer, I somehow became aware of a baseball card show at a mall in Mountain View, CA, which is about 35 miles south of Candlestick Park.
I had never been to a baseball card show before, but I collected cards and autographs (I wrote letters to everybody, and went to games early) but decided to make the nearly 3 hour drive.
I scraped up all my cash (less than $100 probably) brought my binder cover signed by the entire Raiders 1975 squad (in person at family day of training camp in Santa Rosa) thinking I might be able to trade or sell it, and got on the road in the early am.
The "show" was actually a bunch of dealers with tables spread throughout a regular mall. I walked around looking at each table, carefully making mental notes about what I wanted to come back to buy.
At one point I bought an autographed card for $12, I think it might have been a Whitey Ford, but I don't remember.
On the bottom shelf at one dealer's table, in the middle from front to back, towards the left from right to left, there was a dirty baseball with some signatures. There was a little handwritten sign that said "Ball signed by Babe Ruth" and there on the sweetspot was a slightly faded "Babe Ruth". It gives me chills to type that sentence.
I had never seen anything like it.
It was amazing.
I asked the dealer if I could see it.
He pulled it out and handed it to me. I stared at the Babe, then turned it and saw Chas. Ruffing, and Bill Dickey, then Wes Farrell, then...
Lou Gehrig.
There were other signatures, but I stopped there and asked the dealer the price. It was $200.
After buying the Whitey Ford card I had maybe $85.
The dealer had no interest in the Raiders binder, but he had a buddy at the show who might. The buddy didn't. But he had a friend in Fresno who might. We called the friend from a pay phone. He was interested. I needed $115 he wouldn't go higher that $100. I took it. I can't remember what happened to the Whitey card exactly but it went into the deal. Maybe the original dealer bought it back for $10 or took pity on the desperate teenager, maybe the Babe dealer took it, but I walked out of that mall with the ball.
On the way home, I was about to run out of gas, and I had no money, and no credit card. But I had a portable cassette player (the El Camino I had bought from my dad didn't have a stereo yet). Yes, my dad sold it to me, kids didn't get given cars in my home town.
I traded the "ghetto blaster" to the guy at the gas station for a tank of gas, and made it home with my new prized possession.
When I got home I figured out that the ball must have been signed at a game against the Red Sox in 1934, and it was also signed by Joe Mulligan, Dick Porter, Dusty Rhodes, Roy Johnson, Carl Reynolds, John Allen and somebody else who I could never figure out.
That's when I started my quest.
I saw that Willie Mays was going to be at a Giants game, maybe it was an old timers day or something, and decided that I needed to get him to sign the ball. I drove down early for the day game, with no intention to go to the game, due to me needing to be at my grocery store job at 3 pm. I was waiting outside the gate by the player's lot when Mays drove in. There were a bunch of people there all clambering for him to sign, but I was the only one who made it past the security guard. I reached the ball and a pen out towards Willie and said "Mr. Mays, would you sign my baseball, please".
He took the ball and pen from me and as he started to sign, I noticed two things - one the pen wasn't "clicked out" so it wasn't going to write, and two HE WAS ABOUT TO SIGN DIRECTLY ON TOP OF BABE RUTH!!!!!!!
"Don't sign it there!!" I said (probably more of a desperate yell, hahaha), and he thrust the ball and pen back at me saying "If you don't want me to sign it, then here" and shoved it in my hands.
As I numbly walked out of the player's lot, the security guard who I had beaten said "man, you just pissed off Willie Mays" with a confused look on his face.
I went to the box office and bought a cheap seat to the game, made my way down to the side of the field, between home and the Giants dugout, clutching my ball.
Various player were signing for everybody crowding over the rail, Cepeda, Fuentes, etc, but I wasn't getting any signatures. A lady standing next to me asked why I wasn't getting any autographs, and I told her I just needed Mays. "That's going to be a hard one to get" she laughed, and I said that I knew, that I had already almost gotten it, and told her what had happened in the players lot.
"Do you know where you are right now?" she asked me.
Of course I did.
"But do you know exactly where you are?"
I was was confused and told her so.
"You are in Bob Lurie's box, Mr. Lurie is a friend of mine, and I'll bet he could help you get Mr. Mays to sign your ball."
Wow.
She called out to Bob Lurie, and he walked over to us, "tell him what happen" she said.
"I pissed off Willie Mays", I said, and proceeded to tell him the whole story.
Lurie laughed and said, "I';ll bet that if Willie knew what had happened he would sign the ball for you, but he's not going to be able to come over here, so if you will trust me to take the ball from you, I will take it over to him and ask him if he will sign it for you."
Wow.
"But," continued Bob Lurie, "you need to do one thing for me."
Ok...
"You need to lose that jacket!" said a grinning Bob Lurie to this Dodger's fan standing in his box wearing my bright blue Dodger's jacket.
I honestly don't remember whether I said I could or couldn't lose the jacket, but I still have it, and a smiling Bob Lurie took the ball and went out to have Willie Mays sign it for me.
A photographer standing on the other side of the lady took the pictures below and sent them to me.
I also got Hank Aaron (with an assist from Duffy Jennings, SF Giants publicity director in those days), Frank Robinson (who threatened to steal the ball), Harmon Killebrew and Sadaharu Oh (with the help of the Japanese promoter on a tour I did in Japan) to sign the ball, but those are other stories.
So, there is, or at least was (at the time), a ball that the top six HR hitters in the world signed.
But then comes the sad part of my story.
Somehow when I bought my first house in 2000 and moved all of my belongings from storage in my home town to my Los Angeles home the ball disappeared. 20 years ago last month. I lost sleep for months (I'll probably lose sleep tonight). I went to a hypnotist. I search auctions and ebay all the time. I didn't pray, because if there is a god, she has better things to do.
That's my long, and eventually depressing, story.
Doug "it drives me crazy" Goodman
PS - I apologize for the length of this post, and for not checking for typos. I can't bear to read it, it bums me out.