Morey, Ritter & the Glory of Their Times

[T206Collector]

I just received a scan of a terrific letter from Larry Ritter to autograph legend Jeff Morey, essentially crediting Morey for helping him locate some players. I always had a theory that Ritter's book should be credited for getting the names of pre-war players into the minds of autograph seekers in the 1960s and 1970s. It is amazing to see that the autograph seekers themselves had a hand in Ritter's work.

Here's one of my favorite signed T206 cards from the Morey collection (Crawford -- who was also in Ritter's book), as well as a scan of the letter from Ritter to Morey.

[tiger8mush]

awesome! thanks for sharing, Paul!

Rob

[David W]

Here is an article Morey wrote for the March 1961 "Card Comments" on how to get autographs.

[teetwoohsix]

Very cool !!! Thanks for sharing this with us.........LOVE that T206 !!!!

Clayton

[toppcat]

The Glory of Their Times and The Boys of Summer are the two books directly responsible for me becoming very interested in the history of baseball. I read both of them when I was about 13 and they have stuck with me for a long, long time now.

[FrankWakefield]

Paul, that is one fine letter. I wrote Mr. Ritter about 7 years ago, hoping to get his autograph, but I got no reply. Great article, David.

It seems to me that a collector of our dear old cards must read The Glory of Their Times, I love the source of the title, and the "How dear to my heart" verse at the beginning of a couple of the chapters. We all owe Mr. Ritter a debt of gratitude. What a book!!!

[Kawika]

Originally Posted by FrankWakefield

We all owe Mr. Ritter a debt of gratitude. What a book!!!

What Frank said. Aficionados of baseball in those thrilling days of yesteryear would be infinitely more poor if Lawrence Ritter had not undertaken his oral history project.

[rc4157]

I agree with all regarding the excellence of the book, plus if you haven't had a chance to listen to the audio interviews that Mr. Ritter recorded during his research, it is something you should definitely do.

There are about 5 hours of audio with this cd set.

RC

[Jay Wolt]

Paul, great stuff, thanks for posting the letter
The Glory Of Their Times is a great book & every hobbist should read it.

Here are some of my royalty checks from Ritter

[FrankWakefield]

Nice checks.

And it would seem likely that those guys endorsed their checks on the back...

So how do I find myself just one of those?

[baseballart]

Originally Posted by FrankWakefield

Paul, that is one fine letter. I wrote Mr. Ritter about 7 years ago, hoping to get his autograph, but I got no reply. Great article, David.

It seems to me that a collector of our dear old cards must read The Glory of Their Times, I love the source of the title, and the "How dear to my heart" verse at the beginning of a couple of the chapters. We all owe Mr. Ritter a debt of gratitude. What a book!!!

Frank

Larry passed away in February 2004.


Max

[joeadcock]

Great thread

[WillowGrove]

I read the book as a 14 year old and have been taken by the era ever since. And when I found the CD a few years ago - whoa -you gotta listen to it. To hear Chief Meyers laugh at traveling with the LA Dodgers! Hans Lobert telling what JOhn MCGraw thought of him bunting with two strikes as a rookie? It is amazing stuff and makes any car ride or work out fly by!

I too would love to get a check or some other Larry Ritter stuff related to what I call, "the book".

For now I collect photos of the players in the book from the time they were interviewed for it. Picked up a great photo of Goose Goslin at his boat dock while sifting through the SPorting News' acrhives. Love it.

The gentleman running that set up told me he owns the original UNEDITED recordings from Ritter's interviews and they will be available to buy via download in about a year.

and so I shall wait......

[Chris-Counts]

I first read the book when I was about 12 and I've been reading it now for nearly 40 years. It's still my favorite all-time baseball book. The Sam Crawford part is my favorite. He tells Ritter at the beginning of the interview that he doesn't have much time to talk, and then he proceeds to talk the writer's ears off! If I recall, Crawford's was the longest chapter in the book ...

[familytoad]

That &*%^$ book ( the all-time classic) has cost me thousands of dollars!

I had to get accompanying old baseball cards to go along with the chapters...including a bunch of Wahoo Sam cards, as he quickly became one of my favorite HOFers.

Some of those cards have moved along in trades, but the HOFers remain here...someday I may get back into that collecting niche, probably brought on by re-reading the book again...perhaps this approaching winter

[MacDice]

Originally Posted by familytoad

That &*%^$ book ( the all-time classic) has cost me thousands of dollars!

I had to get accompanying old baseball cards to go along with the chapters...including a bunch of Wahoo Sam cards, as he quickly became one of my favorite HOFers.

Some of those cards have moved along in trades, but the HOFers remain here...someday I may get back into that collecting niche, probably brought on by re-reading the book again...perhaps this approaching winter

I agree but for me it was the T-206 Rube Marquard card that was pictured in the book after getting that card I have added over 120 more T206 and have been attacked by the "monster"

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by WillowGrove

For now I collect photos of the players in the book from the time they were interviewed for it. Picked up a great photo of Goose Goslin at his boat dock while sifting through the SPorting News' acrhives. Love it.

The gentleman running that set up told me he owns the original UNEDITED recordings from Ritter's interviews and they will be available to buy via download in about a year.

and so I shall wait......

That would come as a big surprise to the Hall of Fame, to whom Larry donated his original tapes in 1970.
Hank Thomas

[Hot Springs Bathers]

At a SABR Deadball Era Committee "Boiling Out" conference about 5 years ago several members told about their last visit to Ritter's apartment in NYC. Rich may have been with me when we listened to their stories.

Apparently Mr. Ritter had a feeling that it was time to part with some of his stuff. He gave those visitors several autographed baseballs he had picked up on his tour.

Both of them said he was without question one of the nicest people they had ever met in their baseball research.

[T206Collector]

...actively promoted the book because they took part in the royalties. Here are a couple of letters including such promotions from Marquard and Snodgrass, both prolific signers of pre-war cards:

[T206Collector]

...the Rube was talking about in the letter above. Evidently the players had tons of these and used to pass them out, oftentimes autographed, as a way to further promote the book.

[jtschantz]

I am curious about a comment made in this thread about someone owning the original tapes. It has been my understanding that the baseball HOF owns the tapes. I really don't care who owns them, I just want to hear more! I also have read the book, but its the voices on the audio book that I really enjoy. I think I have it in every form (LP, casset tape, cd, and now on an ipod). If anyone has any information on the possible release of more of the tapes, let us know more detail if possible.

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by jtschantz

I am curious about a comment made in this thread about someone owning the original tapes. It has been my understanding that the baseball HOF owns the tapes. I really don't care who owns them, I just want to hear more! I also have read the book, but its the voices on the audio book that I really enjoy. I think I have it in every form (LP, casset tape, cd, and now on an ipod). If anyone has any information on the possible release of more of the tapes, let us know more detail if possible.

The Hall of Fame is starting a 3-year project to digitize their entire collection, which includes Ritter's original reel-to-reel audio tapes. Perhaps they intend to make the results available online. Actually, they already have in their audio collection a digitized set of the tapes, which my partner and I, Neal McCabe, used for the currently available Highbridge set (5 hours, 4 cds) when we produced it in 1998. I don't know if this digitized version is available for listening at the hall. Ritter also donated a copy of the original tapes to the Joyce Collection of the University of Notre Dame. Here is a link to a list of the full contents, which I'm sure you will find interesting:

http://www.sports.nd.edu/Baseball/ritter.html

Of course, there is tons of fascinating stuff in the 120 hours of the original tapes that didn't make it into the published set. But, after working on this project for many months, we both agreed that the 5-hour limitation we were working with turned out to be oddly perfect for the goals we intended for our set, which was to recreate as much as possible the magic of Larry's book. For us, the material for any kind of a "sequel" just wasn't there, or we would have done one. Virtually everything we really wanted made it into the 5 hours available, and there was very, very, little that we regretted not being able to squeeze in. It was almost as if that was the way it was meant to be.
Hank Thomas

[Bridwell]

Looking back on it now, Ritter's book did more to fuel my interest in pre-war baseball cards than anything else. Prior to reading it, I was more interested in players from the 1930's to 1950's. Great book!

[WillowGrove]

Originally Posted by Hankphenom

The Hall of Fame is starting a 3-year project to digitize their entire collection, which includes Ritter's original reel-to-reel audio tapes. Perhaps they intend to make the results available online. Actually, they already have in their audio collection a digitized set of the tapes, which my partner and I, Neal McCabe, used for the currently available Highbridge set (5 hours, 4 cds) when we produced it in 1998. I don't know if this digitized version is available for listening at the hall. Ritter also donated a copy of the original tapes to the Joyce Collection of the University of Notre Dame. Here is a link to a list of the full contents, which I'm sure you will find interesting:

http://www.sports.nd.edu/Baseball/ritter.html

Of course, there is tons of fascinating stuff in the 120 hours of the original tapes that didn't make it into the published set. But, after working on this project for many months, we both agreed that the 5-hour limitation we were working with turned out to be oddly perfect for the goals we intended for our set, which was to recreate as much as possible the magic of Larry's book. For us, the material for any kind of a "sequel" just wasn't there, or we would have done one. Virtually everything we really wanted made it into the 5 hours available, and there was very, very, little that we regretted not being able to squeeze in. It was almost as if that was the way it was meant to be.
Hank Thomas

Wow. So I guess I owe you thanks Hank for coming out with the CD. Do you (or does anyone) know if there are any photos of the interviews or of the subjects themselves? I would love to see where Hans Lobert was living and to see that creaking chair? Also - in the Goose Goslin interview it sounds like Ritter had his son with him - is that true?

And where is Babe's bat the Chief Meyer speaks of?

That book is the reason why I'm on this forum today.

and the creation of the internet

[Hankphenom]

[QUOTE=WillowGrove;852668]Wow. So I guess I owe you thanks Hank for coming out with the CD. Do you (or does anyone) know if there are any photos of the interviews or of the subjects themselves? I would love to see where Hans Lobert was living and to see that creaking chair? Also - in the Goose Goslin interview it sounds like Ritter had his son with him - is that true?

And where is Babe's bat the Chief Meyer speaks of?

That's a great question about photos from Ritter's journeys. I never thought to ask him, and now I wish I had. I'm guessing Larry never took any, or he would have shown them to us at some point during the process of making the audio set. We interviewed him at great length about his experiences with each of the players, and then edited the results to create his introduction to each player segment. I think he would certainly have shown us corresponding photos if there had been any. The only reason he recorded the interviews, he told us, was so he wouldn't be distracted by having to take notes, a brilliant decision in retrospect, not just because the interviews were preserved intact, but because I'm sure they would have gone much differently if the players had been forced to repeat things, or speak more slowly, etc., so Larry could get them written down. He never dreamed there would ever be any interest in hearing any of the interviews, he said. In fact, he never really thought there would ever be a book!

As explained in the booklet accompanying the set, that is, indeed, Stevie Ritter being grilled by the Goose at the end of his interview. Then in his early teens, Stevie was the technician for the interviews, charged by his dad with the responsibility of operating the German tape recorder, the best portable recorder money could buy. Larry told us he mostly wanted his son, who lived with Larry's ex-wife, along for the bonding experience between them. Also heard prominently in the Goslin segment is Larry's girlfriend at the time, Barbara. Her participation worked fine in the Goose's case, because the pretty young lady brought out his flirtatious side and really brought the old man to life, but Larry told us he soon decided that she was ruining the interviews with her interruptions and inane bantering, so he barred her from the interviews. Unfortunately for Larry's love life, she took it personally.

And where is that bat, the one the Babe gave to the Chief?
Hank Thomas

[GoudeyJim]

It would be interesting to talk to Stevie Ritter today and get his memories of the interviews.

[Cy2009]

Hank,

I will give Larry the ultimate thanks for this great piece of work. But we also owe you and Neal a huge thank you for putting the CD set together before the tapes could have been destroyed.

Hank and I have talked about this so many times. I have listened to these tapes easily a hundred times, probably getting closer to 150 now. Each time I love hearing the men tell about the vintage days. And each time while I am driving on vacation or a long trip, I get a big urge to buy some card or sets of cards because of the stories told and I usually go straight to a computer when I reach my destination, looking for something to buy. The CD set is THE best baseball medium, period.

Thanks again, Hank.

Cy

[Rich Klein]

We did play the CD's from the Glory of the Their Times from one of the times I went to Boiling Out.

Also, many of the people who visited Mr. Ritter were SABR friends of mine from the NY Club and they loved visiting him and he loved seeing them as well

Rich

[Ericc22]

Just want to chime in here and let you know how much I love this book, and the audio in particular. Would love to get access to the extended interviews?

I assume that the only edition available to the public is the nearly 5 hour version? Want to make sure I am not missing anything!

Eric

[Gary Dunaier]

Originally Posted by Jay Wolt

Paul, great stuff, thanks for posting the letter
The Glory Of Their Times is a great book & every hobbist should read it.

Here are some of my royalty checks from Ritter

Awesome! I collect checks signed by celebrities and these are collectible even if the players didn't endorse them.