Quote:
Originally Posted by jerseygary
Another thing too, if he did this as often as the stories said he did, how many were simply tossed to a neighborhood kid to use in a game? Back then I'd venture to guess that a baseball, a real good baseball, was worth more to a kid by putting it to use than sticking it in his sock drawer.
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Here's a story to back this up. I asked my Uncle Ed (Walter Johnson's son) once if he and his brother, Walter, Jr., ever got autographs from the players they came into contact with. I knew they both had Washington uniforms and used to shag flies during batting practice as teenagers when their father was managing the Senators, and he had some great stories about that. Here's what he told me:
"Oh, sure, we used to get balls signed by them all the time, I guess we had just about everybody at one time or another. But you know how it is, there'd be a neighborhood game and we needed a ball so we'd grab one of those and play with it. Eventually, we'd have run through all our balls and the last one left, of course, would be the one signed by Babe Ruth. But sooner or later that one would go, too. We always figured we could get more any time we wanted, but of course in the end they all went."