Buying your own piece of baseball history
On 18 April 1923, Babe Ruth stepped up to the plate in the brand new Yankee Stadium, and hit a home run, the first to be struck in the new home of what was destined to become America's ‘winningest' team.
Little did he know at the time that the bat he held in his hands would one day be worth $1.25 million. Called the 'Holy Grail' of sports memorabilia, it was auctioned last year by Sotheby's in New York for $1.265 million. It is only the third piece of sports memorabilia to cross the million dollar mark at auction, but it is symptomatic of the increasingly massive prices collectors are paying for a piece of baseball history.
The Babe's spectacular home run in Yankee Stadium's very first game is often recalled as one of the most dramatic moments in the history of the sport. "Every now and then there's an item that makes me forget it's a business and brings me back to being a collector and a fan," says Doug Allen, president and COO of MastroNet, which purchased the bat on behalf of a private collector. "This is one of them and it's worth every penny. The bat will be featured in the most comprehensive and valuable New York Yankees and Babe Ruth collections known."
Professional baseball in the United States has now been followed by at least five generations of Americans. Although American football and basketball are competing hard for the hearts of America's sports-going public, neither sport has the history of baseball, which can boast a galaxy of stars going back to before the First World War, many of whom are now household names. Consequently it is baseball memorabilia, not basketball or boxing, which can command these prices.
Baseball has also benefited from the mania for collecting baseball cards, and indeed it is a baseball card, the Honus Wagner T206 Baseball Card PSA 8 specifically, which is one of the items that has also commanded more than a million dollars at auction. Part of a discontinued print run from 1911, it went for $1.265 million. Wagner, also known as the Flying Dutchman, was one of the first players to be elected to the baseball Hall of Fame in 1936, but started playing in the big leagues in 1897. The card is prized partly for its rarity, as the print run was cancelled, some say because Wagner was not paid, others because he disapproved of the sale of tobacco to children (the cards were often sold with boxes of cigarettes, although they later graduated to more 'innocent' products like bubble gum).
Items need not date back to the 1920s to command high prices however: rarity, an association with a popular team, or an historic game can also make items valuable. For example, the glove worn by Sandy Koufax, one of the most dominating pitchers in the history of the game, when he pitched a no-hitter in 1963, was recently sold for $126,500. And more recently, the bat used by Derek Jeter to hit a walk-off homer which clinched the fourth game of the 2001 World Series, signed by the man himself, was sold for $26,000.
It all raises the question of why more internationally-recognised sports, like tennis, golf, or soccer, can't command such prices for their artefacts at auction? Why does baseball, with a collector base located almost entirely in the US (although there are occasionally buyers from Japan and Latin America), outstrip other sports, even boxing, itself long associated with big money and historic moments?
"Baseball has the largest number of active collectors," says Lee Dunbar, director of Sotheby's Collectors Department in New York. "You can collect at all levels, from five dollars for a pack of baseball cards, to a quarter of a million for a bat. There has been a steady appreciation in both numbers and prices for memorabilia."
She says the Babe Ruth bat is a perfect example of the sort of item that will fetch a high price: it is not a secondary item, like an autographed photo, which will be available in much larger numbers - the bat is a core part of the game, and this bat was used to achieve a feat that cannot be bested. A world record can always be beaten, and the value of an item associated with a record could go down as a result, but the first home run in Yankee Stadium will always stand.
Coming up in June, Sotheby's has another major sports memorabilia auction scheduled, with more than 350 lots drawn from baseball, basketball, football, boxing, and tennis. Pride of place, however, goes to another Babe Ruth item, this time the controversial contract which sold him from the then-struggling Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees on 26 December 1919, for the fantastic sum of $100,000. The sale of Ruth to the Yankees changed the sports world forever, and turned the Yankees from a team yet to win the championship into one of the greatest sports clubs in the world. The Red Sox, on the other hand, entered a World Series drought, the so-called "Curse of the Bambino", which lasted until their victory last October. The contract is arguably the most significant document in sports history, and is expected to sell for at least $500,000 at auction.
When buying your piece of baseball history, it is important to be sure what you're getting is authentic. Like other premier auction houses, Sotheby's employs a third-party authenticator to ensure that items coming up for sale are exactly what they're professed to be. Provenance is vital in this business, which is why items usually need to be signed in some manner and have some form of independent authentication. Many of those lots for sale in June have come directly from the estates of the stars themselves, or from relatives or people directly associated with them. Ruth's bat, for example, was donated to the Los Angeles Evening Herald Tribune by the man himself, and signed as well. It was the prize in a high school home run competition won by Victor Orsatti, in June 1923. He willed it to his caretaker upon his death in 1984, and she kept it under her bed until its sale last year.
The Sotheby's auction, to be held in New York on 10 June, will include items from the estates of Lefty Grove, Ernie Lombardi, tennis star Arthur Ashe, legendary British-born baseball umpire Tom Connolly, and sportswriter and Pulitzer Prize winner Jim Murray.
