Harry Wright Scorecard in Clean Sweep

[GaryPassamonte]

Amen, Barry. It's all about the money and similar to cutting up bats and uniforms to make chase cards. Maybe we should cut up the Mona Lisa or the Declaration of Independence so that people could get a piece. Why not? I have to admit to buying one of these sheets because Ross Barnes played in the game. I have never felt good about that purchase.

[barrysloate]

You didn't do anything wrong Gary by buying it. What's done is done. You should just enjoy it.

Wright used to sell blank booklets in his sporting goods store. I believe each booklet was around 32 pages and could score 16 games. He used these books himself, often going through six or seven to complete a season. He would have them bound together, with leather covers, and the result were his famous scorebooks which he kept meticulously from 1878 to 1893 (there could have been other years but they are unknown).

The individual 32 page booklets stand nicely on their own, and I owned a couple of those too over the years. When those season books were first split, the individual sections were being offered for sale.

But when those booklets were torn up to sell as individual pages, the whole history was destroyed, since each individual page featured one team from each of two separate games. But somebody figured out the autographs were worth more than the scoresheets, and therein lies the problem.

[doug.goodman]

I would love to have a full game, but am saddened to say that I am kind of interested in a page. I guess Gary and I are of like minds.

[barrysloate]

Originally Posted by doug.goodman

I would love to have a full game, but am saddened to say that I am kind of interested in a page. I guess Gary and I are of like minds.

It's still a nice affordable way to get a Wright signature, on a document no less

[Keith H. Thompson]

I have the complete 1889 Harry Wright Scorebook (Lew Lipsett) and two of the 1890 individual books including the pre-season. A fascinating feature of the Wright scorebooks that I have seen are the detailed pre-season and post season books which contain baseball history otherwise difficult to research. My interest, of course is in the career of Sam Thompson.

My question for the Net54 members and for the NYC Dinner attendees in particular -- would the owner of any other 1890 Wright individual booklets share that information with me ?

Keith H Thompson

[khkco4bls]

It Pisses me off when they destroy history. GREEDY BASTARDS..

[tazdmb]

I will play Devil's Advocate and am glad the Scorebook got broken up. It allowed collectors-including myself-to get a piece of history at an affordable price. Additionally, the scorecard themselves are still intact, it is not as though the buyer cut the signature out of the scorecard. With all the stolen Wright documents out there, it gave average collectors a chance at getting his signature and collecting a moment of history at the same time.

[RichardSimon]

Originally Posted by GaryPassamonte

Amen, Barry. It's all about the money and similar to cutting up bats and uniforms to make chase cards. Maybe we should cut up the Mona Lisa or the Declaration of Independence so that people could get a piece. Why not? I have to admit to buying one of these sheets because Ross Barnes played in the game. I have never felt good about that purchase.

There are some out there who would gladly cut up the Declaration. Lots of rare cuts .

[bigfanNY]

And they would sell them to collectors trying to piece together a collection of singers of the Decloration of Independence..

[bigfanNY]

But at the same time the marketplace discounts items like:scorecards, programs, yearbooks even Who's who that have multiple autographs. In the last REA I sold a Tiger program that sold for half what I could have gotten by cutting out the Mel Ott signature. Never mind the value of the other autographs. I personally cannot cut these things up but I do not vilify those that do they are just reacting to the market conditions. And until market changes it will continue to happen.

[Baseball Rarities]

I once owned Wright's 1882 scorebook from his days with the Providence Grays. Unfortunately, it has long been sold. I am hoping that it is still intact.

Barry (or anyone else) - When do you think that Wright actually scored these? During the actual games, or sometime afterwards? The reason that I ask is that they are so meticulously done that it seems improbable to me that Wright actually had the time do this during the actual game. I know that the famous Kalamazoo Bat image shows Wright with what seems to be a scorebook in his hand, but I still wonder if he just took notes during the game and transposed them later on, or if he actually was able to create these fabulous scorebooks while the games were actually going on.

[GaryPassamonte]

That's a good question, Kevin. I would lean towards the score books being done in real time. Pitching changes and position player substitutions were minimumal at the time. I don't believe on field strategies were very complex either. Wright may have just been neat and scored the game while sitting back in his easy chair.

[ramram]

I have the June 26 - August 2, 1883 Providence booklet of Wrights.

I think I may have an answer regarding as to whether Harry Wright actually scored the games directly into these scorecards/scorebooks during the game. My answer is that sometimes he did and sometimes he didn't.

In some of these scored games Harry has multiple small tic marks for tracking assists, errors, etc. These were the games he scored during the game.

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In other games, he did not use these multiple tic marks and I believe he scored them on other scorecards and then entered them into the booklet later.

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For further proof I'll digress for a moment. On the back of each booklet, or at least the one I have, Wright has cut down a single scorecard and glued it to the back of the booklet to add a little color.

Back.jpg

I figured that scorecard may hold a clue so I pulled it back as best I could. Sure enough, it has a scored game on it and it's one of the games from my booklet. That game in my booklet did not have the multiple tic marks on it. So, I believe Harry scored that particular game on the individual scorecard and then added it to the scorebook later.

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One more thought, I believe the scorebook Harry is holding in the dugout is actually one of these booklets.

Harry.jpg

He had these trimmed down and gilded before they were put into the the full year's scorebook. You can see where part of his writing is cut off from the top of the scored pages.

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Rob M