Selling cards to a players family

[obiwan1129]

I am a shirt tail relation to Dick Wakefield. My Grandpa's sister, my Aunt Betty, married his brother, my Uncle Jack. I met Dick once when I was about 7 or 8. I tracked down his Bowman card when I was in high school. In the early days of Ebay I tracked down all of his major cards. My mom's cousin is Dick's godchild. She is a big baseball fan as well. We both, unknowingly, bid against each other on one of his baseball gloves on Ebay. Whoops.

Dick was friends with Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. According to my cousin he was godfather to their daughter Carrie also.

Last summer I sent my cards over to my cousin, she has a small display set up at her home of his memorabilia. I kept a Dick Wakefield autograph I had. My grandpa got it years ago when a bunch of players got together to do a fund raiser dinner for Dick. Sparky Anderson and Jolting Joe were there too, I have both of their autographs from that dinner.

Of course, it should be noted that Dick's father, Howard, played ball too for Cleveland back in the early 1900's. My cousin went to the HOF library many years ago and looked up her Grandpa Howard. He died young, long before she was born. The librarian at the HOF brought out a picture of him and it brought her to tears as she had never seen a photo of him.