Baseball Memorabilia

Just as spring training for the new baseball season is beginning, Hunt Auctions Inc. of Wayne will hold its annual late-winter sale of baseball memorabilia. With several items related to African American and other minority players, the two-day sale also is a suitable windup to Black History Month. According to David Hunt, the most important item is an old-timers game uniform dating to 1965. It belonged to Jackie Robinson, who became the first black to play modern major-league baseball when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

The Philadelphia Art Alliance will sell more than 100 donated artworks between 1 and 5 p.m. tomorrow in a silent auction, including two works from the collection of Vivian and Meyer Potamkin. The sale is one of two tomorrow that will offer some unusual pickings. In a silent auction, sheets of paper accompany the items to be sold. On them bidders leave their bids, returning from time to time to see if they have been outbid. Most of the items in tomorrow's sale at the alliance, 251 S. 18th St., have minimum bids, but those are quite low. For instance, the items donated by the Potamkins - a small statue and a silk-screen print by John Clem Clarke depicting a drunken Bacchus - have minimum bids of $50 each.

HEY MITT, you might as well concede the presidential election now — Charles Barkley says you don't have a chance. Barkley, a former Sixer turned NBA analyst and SportsWeek columnist, is already calling November's election in favor of President Obama. Barkley was part of TNT's broadcast team for Sunday's Celtics-Hawks game when the camera showed Romney, the Republican nominee, in the Boston Garden crowd. "Mitt Romney. Listen main man, we're going to beat you like a drum in November," Barkley said over-the-air.

Willie McCovey, the Hall of Fame slugger who remains among baseball's all-time home run champions 16 years after retiring, was sentenced in New York to two years probation for evading taxes on baseball memorabilia. "It's one of those things that was overlooked at the time and I do accept responsibility for it," McCovey, 57, told U.S. District Judge Edward R. Korman yesterday in Brooklyn. He entered the courtroom with the help of a cane, still recovering from an 11-hour back operation last fall.

It may not be as good as being in Florida for spring training, but a major sale of baseball memorabilia reminds us that spring - and the 1994 season - is drawing near. The baseball memorabilia is being offered at 1:30 p.m. today at the Holiday Inn on Route 100 in Exton by Hunt Inc. Auctions. The 480-lot sale includes photographs, tobacco cards and autographed items - one of them arousing a delightful speculation. The top photo in the sale is probably one showing the famous triple-play team Tinkers, Evers and Chance and autographed by Joe Tinker.

A basic item we pretty much take for granted as we try to stay cool during the dog days of summer is ice. While conveniently available now, ice was a precious commodity back in the 1700s, when it had to be strenuously harvested in winter and stored in stone ice houses on farms. An old ice house is just one vestige of the past you can see tomorrow when you visit auctioneer Ken Reed's on-site sale of real estate and antiques at the Gotwals Family Homestead in Collegeville. Along with an ice house, the five-acre Gentleman's Farm features an eight-bedroom stone house dating to the 1700s, a stone and frame guest house, large barn with a finished office, chicken house, springhouse, equipment shed, three-car garage, truck garage, harness shed, and other multi-use structures.

The sale is not until next month, but this weekend you can see some of the items that will be offered at what is being billed as one of the top baseball-memorabilia auctions in years. The items, including the collection of 20-year major-league veteran Mickey Vernon, are on display at the Hunt Auctions Inc.'s site at the All Star FanFest at the Convention Center through Tuesday. They are among the more than 750 lots that will be offered Aug. 9 and 10 by Hunt Auctions Inc. of Wayne.

A major sale of baseball memorabilia, including two sets of baseball cards that are expected to fetch five-figure prices, has been scheduled for next Saturday near Harrrisburg. Prices may be affected, however, by a coincidental conflict. Next Saturday is also induction day at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., and auctioneer David Birmingham of Middletown, Pa., says several potential bidders have reserved tables for that event. "I picked the date last January," Birmingham said yesterday.

Hours after being banned from baseball, Pete Rose returned to cable television last night to sell baseball memorabilia and tell viewers his achievements on the field still merit Hall of Fame selection. "I don't think today's ruling has anything to do with me making the Hall of Fame," Rose told a viewer from San Diego who called on Cable Value Network, a home shopping station. "I'm looking forward to being reinstated into baseball after a year. I did my part to go to the Hall of Fame, as far as I'm concerned.

American League umpire Al Clark, the focus of major league baseball's investigation into the sale of baseballs said to have been used in David Wells's perfect game in May, has denied any involvement. "Until Richie Phillips [head of the umpires' union] told me six weeks ago about the situation, I didn't know anything about it," Clark said from his Williamsburg, Va., home. The 50-year-old umpire said he was not involved in the trafficking of the balls, and did not guarantee their authenticity.

HEY MITT, you might as well concede the presidential election now — Charles Barkley says you don't have a chance. Barkley, a former Sixer turned NBA analyst and SportsWeek columnist, is already calling November's election in favor of President Obama. Barkley was part of TNT's broadcast team for Sunday's Celtics-Hawks game when the camera showed Romney, the Republican nominee, in the Boston Garden crowd. "Mitt Romney. Listen main man, we're going to beat you like a drum in November," Barkley said over-the-air.

At 11:29 p.m. on Oct 21, 1980, in front of 65,839 fans at Veterans Stadium and the second-largest TV audience in World Series history, Tug McGraw threw a Rawlings baseball past Kansas City's Willie Wilson for the final out of Game 6. Though the useful life span of that ball, stamped with commissioner Bowie Kuhn's signature and a red 1980 World Series logo, was a mere two pitches - 63 seconds, to be exact - it was the central artifact in what...

Much of the memorabilia Curt Flood's widow will sell at a Louisville auction tomorrow remains painful for Philadelphians to contemplate. There is his white-gold World Series ring from 1964, the year the Phillies' historic collapse gave his Cardinals the pennant. There are trophies and awards that remind us how good a player Philadelphia lost when Flood, setting in motion the legal fight that would topple baseball's reserve clause and trigger free agency, refused his 1969 trade here.

The crack of a wooden bat, the thwop of a fiercely thrown pitch boring into a catcher's mitt, sunny dispatches from Florida about the Phillies' prospects. These sweet signs of spring are welcome everywhere, but no more so than at Bob Burton's Barber Shop in Kennett Square. "I like baseball because I like the time of year," says Burton, 71, who presides over the four-chair shop. "You know the days are going to get longer and warmer, as opposed to football season, when you know the days are going to get shorter and colder.

At the Phillies' home opener tomorrow against the Washington Nationals, Michael Peich will be fully consumed by his self-admitted passion. The director and founder of West Chester University's Poetry Center, Peich, 60, is a devoted baseball fan. He considers his obsession healthy, joking that his wife has allowed only so much of their home to be taken over by his baseball memorabilia. "It's beyond cards and signatures, but goes to the lives of the players, the history and drama of the sport.

After bidding $90,000 yesterday for one of three National League Most Valuable Player trophies earned by baseball Hall of Famer Roy Campanella, the buyer had a moment of panic. Had he paid too much? That bottom-of-the-stomach feeling eased an instant later when the second of Campanella's trophies was sold to a telephone bidder for $95,000. Ron Leff, 49, of the Philadelphia area, turned in his chair and high-fived one of his friends. "Whoo!" he said. Then came the third trophy.

A basic item we pretty much take for granted as we try to stay cool during the dog days of summer is ice. While conveniently available now, ice was a precious commodity back in the 1700s, when it had to be strenuously harvested in winter and stored in stone ice houses on farms. An old ice house is just one vestige of the past you can see tomorrow when you visit auctioneer Ken Reed's on-site sale of real estate and antiques at the Gotwals Family Homestead in Collegeville. Along with an ice house, the five-acre Gentleman's Farm features an eight-bedroom stone house dating to the 1700s, a stone and frame guest house, large barn with a finished office, chicken house, springhouse, equipment shed, three-car garage, truck garage, harness shed, and other multi-use structures.

It is the crocus of baseball. Seven weeks before the Phillies open their season, Hunt Auctions Inc. will again conduct its annual midwinter sale of sports memorabilia, most of it baseball-related. The two-day sale Friday and next Saturday in Exton will offer more than 1,100 lots of balls, bats, uniforms, photographs, trading cards, pennants, stadium seats - even some accessories only indirectly involved with the game, such as a P. Lorillard & Co. tobacco-display cabinet and a still-life portrait of two packs of Sweet Caporal cigarettes.

Jack Scott's baseball career went as far as Newark in 1950, when he was invited to the stadium there to try out for the New York Yankees. Although his professional baseball prospects ended there because, Scott said, "I couldn't hit the long balls," his love of the game endured. On display until Aug. 3 at the West Deptford Public Library are balls, programs, hats, bats and other baseball memorabilia that the Woodbury resident has collected for more than a half-century. Included are baseballs signed by Stan Musial, Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton, Pete Rose, Richie Ashburn, Cal Ripken Jr. and others; a hat autographed by Mickey Morandini, second baseman for the Phillies; and a foul ball Scott caught during a Phillies game against Cincinnati in 1984.

American League umpire Al Clark, the focus of major league baseball's investigation into the sale of baseballs said to have been used in David Wells's perfect game in May, has denied any involvement. "Until Richie Phillips [head of the umpires' union] told me six weeks ago about the situation, I didn't know anything about it," Clark said from his Williamsburg, Va., home. The 50-year-old umpire said he was not involved in the trafficking of the balls, and did not guarantee their authenticity.