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Posted By: Alan O'Connor

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Hi All-

Sorry to be so slow to weigh in on this topic, but I had to pull this photo from storage. This is the actual photo that Sam Gordon hung in "Sam's Original Ranch Wagon" at 19th & Broadway in Sacramento. It shows Sam giving Sal & his wife $5,000 and getting the ball from Sal. Maris is watching. Sam was a great fan of baseball and the Ranch Wagon was just a few blocks down the street from the PCL Sacramento Solons ball park, Edmonds Field. Sam was also a Solons fan and sponsored the 1958 team photo which had the caption, "Sam, the man who brought food to Sacramento" across the bottom.

I grew up in the neighborhood (ate a lot of Sam's sandwiches)and heard a lot about Sam when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. One of the local "legends" is that Sam gave the ball to Maris the day that Sal got the check and Maris took it home with him to North Dakota. Supposedly, Sam was to later drive to ND and pick up Maris and go with him and the ball to Cooperstown. When Sam got to ND, Maris went to a closet and grabbed the first ball he came to out of big pile of balls. So, the story says that the ball that went to the HOF was a random ball, not the actual one he hit. I have no idea if any of this is true, but it was a great local story!

Has anyone else ever heard this story?

Alan