Memorabilia

For Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt , spring means working with the Phillies hitters, to be sure, but what it really means is that he'll be going fishing more. Schmidt, who lives in Jupiter, Fla., is working with the World Fishing Network to drum up interest in a contest called Ultimate Fishing Town USA. Anglers are being asked to nominate their town at www.WFNFishingTown.com for the chance to win $25,000 to support a local fishing project, as well as a 30-minute TV show on WFN. Could be a new dock, says Schmidt, or a public ramp.

Not long ago, the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society had to cancel its annual fund-raising breakfasts, because most of the players who used to attend had died. More recently, the passing of 1953 all-star Gus Zernial left the number of surviving ex-A's at either 36 or 37. No one was certain, because Max Silberman, the member tasked with keeping the count, died two years ago. Like the last vestiges of a deep and memorable snow, those who played and rooted for Connie Mack's A's are gradually melting away.

It was the hallowed home of the Sixers and the Flyers. It was a shrine for the shrieking fans of the Grateful Dead, not to mention nearly every other top musical act of the last 40 years. And soon it will be gone. The Spectrum, South Philadelphia's storied sports and entertainment venue, which opened in 1967, will be demolished this month. But from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, the public was to be let in to claim one last memory. In an "If You Can Carry It, You Can Keep It" free-for-all, folding chairs, bar stools, used TVs, office furniture, leather couches, computer equipment, coffee and bar tables, lamps, and other collectibles were to be arrayed on the arena's floor.

An oil painting by the leader of the Scalp Level School, a southwestern Pennsylvania art colony that predated the Brandywine and Bucks County impressionists, will be for sale this afternoon. Alderfer Auction and Appraisal's sale in Hatfield will offer 200 lots of American and European paintings, including the oil by George Hetzel, probably the best-known artist southwestern Pennsylvania had produced until the advent of Andy Warhol. The Scalp Level School took its name from its location, a once bucolic town southeast of Johnstown where around 1830 an art gallery opened that became a nucleus for area artists.

About 40 percent of the memorabilia adorning the walls of the legendary Philadelphia International Records building was unaccounted for yesterday, a company executive said the day after a fire damaged the building. Fire officials have called Sunday's blaze "suspicious" and are keeping mum about the man whom firefighters rescued from the burning building but who had no reason for being there. Chuck Gamble, executive vice president of Philadelphia International Records, said officials have not told him the man's name, making it difficult to determine if he had any connection to the Center City building where legends like Michael Jackson, Patti LaBelle and the O'Jays have recorded.

A strong fire swept through the Broad Street offices of Philadelphia International Records yesterday, causing extensive damage to the building where Chubby Checker recorded "The Twist," and where songwriters Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff developed their soulful Philadelphia sound. Investigators, who arrived four minutes after the 7:28 a.m. alarm, were working yesterday to determine the cause of the blaze. They immediately escorted an unidentified man from the three-story building on the corner of Spruce Street across from the Kimmel Center.

Black History Month will be marked Feb. 23 in New York with a major sale of works by African American artists, including several with Philadelphia ties. But earlier there will be another auction of local historic significance: the liquidation of Richman's Ice Cream in South Jersey's Salem County. The company's huge white art deco building near the intersection of Route 40 and Kings Highway, a few miles east of the Delaware Memorial Bridge, had long been not only a landmark but also a mecca for motorists who would go there to get the freshly produced ice cream that was distributed throughout the region.

The posters all started with an image of a red-shirted, cowboy-hatted Bill Pickett. Larry Richards had been offering his black film festival at the West Philadelphia library branch for about four years when a friend came in with an art poster of the smiling black cowboy from the 1923 race film The Bull-Dogger. He wondered if Richards would like to display it. A black movie poster? That was something new to Richards. "He just became immediately taken with the art," Beverly Richards said of her husband, who was an artist.

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.