Best venue to sell game used WILLIE MAYS BAT!

[ullmandds]

and here is an exerpt from a book my friend wrote regarding this bat:

On July 31, 1956 my father took me to the Polo Grounds to see my first major league night game, a twi-nighter against the Cincinnati Redlegs. Dad skipped the last couple of hours of his summer road crew job but by the time we navigated a network of Long Island highways, traversed the Triborough Bridge and entered the stadium at 8th Avenue and 155th Street, the first contest was more than half in the book.

We zigzagged the pedestrian ramps to the upper deck and I heard the distant crack of the bat, a sound so distinctly “baseball” it forges an emotional link in millions of baseball hearts. The home crowd erupted, its collective voice deep-throated, spontaneous, rich and full. Jackie Brandt, a rookie Giant outfielder from Omaha, had homered off lefty reliever Pat Scantlebury, a Panamanian nearing the end of a distinguished international pitching career. If I listen closely to the replay in my mind I can hear the hit with a 7-year-old’s ears. I can still feel the internal electric current the crowd’s roar transmitted to my heart.

A few seconds later the other-worldly vista of an enclosed stadium appeared, Technicolor gone steroidal played across a Cinerama screen. Row upon row of seats gleaming under artificial illumination. Virtually unblemished infield skin. Park-green outfield grass. The playing surface populated by neatly clad players wearing gray sleeveless uniform tops over red t-shirts and one in the batter’s box wearing a cream jersey and a black hat. To this day I feel a youth’s excitement upon entering a stadium and eagerly anticipate the initial glimpse of the field, even the oft-maligned Metrodome, a major league venue now abandoned for an outdoor one at the immensely popular Target Field, a pitchers’ park where homers are rare, a stadium better known for its ambiance and amenities than for the quality of the competition.

A white shirted attendant pointed to our seats under an overhang decorated by an ornate façade. With the Giants leading 4-0 in the bottom of the seventh New York outfielder Don Mueller scratched out an infield single. He advanced to second on a wild pitch and scored on Red Schoendienst’s single to center, drawing emotion from the crowd once more. My hero, Willie Mays, ended the inning. He whiffed on a third strike.

Willie’s out represented a small disappointment since, after the Redlegs got one back in the top of the eighth courtesy of pinch hitter Stan Palys’ homer, the Giants won. According to New York Daily News writer Jim McCulley, “The Giants upset the second-place Redlegs, 5-1, in the opener of a twi-nighter as Joe Margoneri went the distance with a nifty five-hitter.”

In the nightcap Cincinnati scored five in the fifth and took a 7-1 lead. The Giants didn’t rally. They split the doubleheader. In truth, not a bad result for a 34-58 team, hardly that of a pennant contender.

I didn’t care I rooted for a cellar dwelling team. I didn’t notice the sparse attendance. I loved being there. I loved the Giants’ cream jerseys. I loved seeing Willie play. Besides, to my way of thinking, the best was yet to come.

In the days before Walter O’Malley and Horace Stoneham took their National League franchises to the West Coast, New York fans expected to walk on the field after games. In fact event management encouraged patrons to use it as an efficient way to empty the stadium, directing fan toward gate openings in the outfield walls. On several previous occasions I’d trekked across the Yankee Stadium outfield to stand awestruck before the famous monuments, memorials to Miller Huggins, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig clustered around the flag pole in dead center field. After the second game on this night I walked on Willie’s turf.

Dad and I made our way to the field and stood on the top step of the Giant dugout where an equipment manager purposefully pulled the bats from a storage cabinet and stuffed them into a white canvas bag with a reinforced leather bottom. The man paused as he yanked one particular bat from the rack. He lifted a buckskin Adirondack, the wood veined with darker streaks. He examined it carefully. Grasping it by the barrel he tapped the handle gently against the dugout steps. The cracked bat responded with a twang. He held it up, caught my eye and tossed it my way, an upside-down exclamation point. The genuine ash product bore an inscription on the barrel: Willie Mays.