Ev Ehrlich's Everyday Economics

Items From Our Collection

ITEM: The Halper Collection, the worlds largest private collection of baseball memorabilia, was recently sold at auction at Sothebys for more than $40 million. As baseball begins its biggest season ever, who know what treasures will soon come to market?

Item 1. Ty Cobb Blast Em Coin Bank
The ever-competitive Cobb held on to every dollar as resolutely as he did his bat while accumulating a lifetime average of .367. This 1908 Ty Cobb version of the then-popular Uncle Sam penny banks capitalized on his both his fabled fielding prowess and his parsimony: roll a penny down the chute, and The Geogia Peach picks it and throws it into a waiting first basemans mitt. Moreover, true to Ol' Ty's cantankerous nature, the bank could also be fitted with a small caliber bullet to catch unawares the larcenous interloper who turned the bank over without first flipping the banks secret signal switch for time out. Caught stealing, Cobb style

Item 2. Dizzy Deans Tarot Cards
Everyone knows Jerome Hanna Dizzy Dean won 30 games in 1934 to propel the fabled Cardinal Gashouse Gang into the Fall Classic against the Bengals of Detroit. But tarot? Let The Wild Horse of the Osage, hot corner specialist Pepper Martin, tell the story:

Ol Diz might have been a hillbilly, but he had his mystic side, too, an he never traveled without them tarot cards. We wuz on the train to Detroit when he consulted them cards as to how to pitch to the Tiger line-up, which wuz loaded with big guns like Gehringer, Cochrane, Goose Goslin, and that sheeny Greenberg. So Diz takes out his deck of the Major Arcana an he closes his eyes, spits, makes a sign, and says Greenberg, an then he draws The Fool, then Temperance, then The Devil, and then The Hanged Man, an he says, I knew it Curve ball for strike one, a slow one for strike two, then the heater an hes struck out An in the third frame of the first game, Diz was holdin a 3-1 lead with two gone an Cochrane on third an Gehringer on second, an he fanned the big Jew on just them same pitches

Item 3. Cap Ansons Gall Stones
Anson, the first man to knock 3,000 hits, batted a towering .399 as player-manager in Chicagos 1881 campaign. But did you know that he did it all while suffering from a debilitating case of gallstones? Anson later described the affliction as being as painful as getting plunked in the brisket by Cy Youngs hard one. Absent the malady, Ol' Cap surely would have legged out one more base-knock that season to reach the magical .400 mark And the distraction of the ceaseless agony no doubt played some role in Ansons grumpy boycott of competing Clubs who put Black players on the field, leading to the Negros 60-year hiatus from Big League Action

Item 4. Casey Stengels 1912 First Edition Copy of Remembrance of Things Past
True baseball fans know that the Old Perfesser graduated from Western Dental College in Kansas City in 1912, one year before he won the starting center fielders job for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the same year that Marcel Proust published the first of the thirteen volumes of his literary classic. But how many know that, after being selected as class valedictorian, Casey was gifted by his fellow cuspidrilles with a leather-bound first edition of that same first volume of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. The dog-eared volume, inscribed to Charles D. Stengel, with kudos, from his classmates, was Caseys constant companion on the road in a five-decade baseball career.
Casey's third sacker, Dr. Bobby Brown, shared his love of literature. As Bobby tells it: Case was sitting peaceably in the dugout one day, holding that Proust book in his lap he was never without it, you know when Yogi comes by and says, So, Casey, howd that book on helping your memory finally turn out? and Casey, he winks at me and turns to Yog and says, with that famous twinkle in his eye, I cant remember. I thought Woodling and Bauer would bust a gut laughing

Item 5. Hitler's Baseball Glove
As war clouds grew over the Atlantic in the late 1930's, a group of prominent Americans, led by Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg, encouraged Hitler to court American public opinion. To make their case, they sent him a baseball glove in the hope of stimulating an interest in the National Pastime. While war ensued nonetheless, the Fuhrer grew fond of the mitt a Tris Speaker model whiling away sunny afternoons at Berchtesgaden tossing the horsehide pill with Baseball Annie Eva Braun. Ol' Adolf's plan to form a playing nine at the German High Command took a nosedive, however, when first-sacker Rudolph Hess jumped the Club to barnstorm rival England. Thats why free agency is so detrimental to baseball, the diminutive tyrant is said to have remarked. OSS certificate of authenticity included

Item 6. Satchel Paige's Birth Certificate
Leroy Robert Satchel Paige claimed to have won over a thousand games in his Negro League career before he cracked the color line in 1948, going 6 and 1 for the pennant-winning Indians and winning the Rookie of the Year Award. But how old was he? He claimed to be born in Mobile, Alabama in 1906, but some historians put the date at 1905, or even 1904 or '03
The discovery of Paige's actual birth certificate ends the debate: Ol' Satch was actually born in...1875 Blessed with a youthful appearance and a spry agility earned by years of stoop labor, Paige broke into The Show not at 42, but 73, a remarkable athletic achievement.

Former Tribe manager Lou Boudreau wasn't surprised. Ol' Satch used to get these envelopes from the Social Security Administration each month. I'd ask him what they were, and he's say 'They's actuarial tables, Mr. Lou. I'm tryin' to calculate what might be gainin' on me.' I guess Satch put it over on all of us

6 and 1 at 73 Imagine what Ol' Satch would have done if he'd made it to the big leagues in his prime