Hank Aaron 714 & 715 Bat and Ball Photo

[gonefishin]

I posted this on the Heritage Hank Aaron base thread, but I think everyone got a little tired of that thread, so I thought I would make a new thread and add a little more conspiracy theory to the original thread.

Going through my stash of old AP, Wire, Lazer photo this morning, I came across the attached interesting photo. It's an original AP photo from April 19, 1974 that shows who obtained the bat and balls from Aaron's 714 and 715 record home runs. It shows a Mr. Don Rice, National Advertising Manager for Magnavox and 2 security guards taking possession of the bat and balls. These items were to be stored in the First National City vault. It doesn't state who has ownership of either.

The caption for the AP photo was "Valuable Possessions".

With that much attention to the bat and balls, would it not stand to reason that all other equipment would also be valuable, i.e. the bases he rounded?

I am very undecided about which bases are real, a major part of the Heritage thread, and which are not. However, I find it very suspect that members of the Braves organization didn't realize at that time how important the bases were and the groundskeeper did.

My apologies for making a separate thread, but I definitely wanted to shed a little more light on the event.