A few years ago, I financed my oldest daughter’s first year of college by selling a large chunk of my New York Mets collection. This included all my 62-75 Mets Topps cards, yearbooks, and autographed baseballs. I can remember driving home after the deal, that I had “over-sold”. Prior to deal, I had felt that I really wasn’t devoting too much time to the collection which I had started when I was just a kid and it was only accumulating dust. But after the deal, I began to really miss those memories.
Of course, part of the fun of having a collection, is acquiring the items. “Acquiring” is completely different from “Possessing”. So, the selling of the items, led me to a rejuvenated interest in the Mets organization. The major league club was in turmoil, ownership was derailing, Shea Stadium had been torn down, Greg Goosen had passed away. I began to look deeper into the Mets future, who was on their way up, how were they handling their draft picks, when would they be a legitimate franchise again?
Then Sandy Alderson came in as their General Manager and the entire Mets ship seemed to stabilize. Over the past year, I’ve begun to reacquire items to replace the ones I had parted with.
Three weeks ago, the dealer I had sold my items to held an auction and amazingly, one of the autographed baseballs I sold was up for sale.
This 1971 autographed team baseball has a story worth telling: My cousin met and married a man she met while on a bus tour of California in the late sixties. He was one of two bus drivers on the guided tour. She married him and moved to San Francisco. Her husband worked for the bus company that had the contract for Candlestick Park. His job was to drive the visiting team to the ballpark from their hotel. One day, when the Mets were in town, he got the team to sign that baseball and he gave it me.
So, to get back to the opening question. How far can a Mets baseball travel? Well this one traveled from San Francisco to Long Island, then to New Hampshire, back to Long Island, and now its en-route BACK TO NEW HAMPSHIRE AGAIN because I won the auction.
This baseball has traveled a lot of miles.
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Nice story. It’s interesting how a mere object can become a vessel of memory. You hold it, you see it, and the stories are triggered forth. I am glad you’ve got that ball back.
Awesome Jim. It’s a marvelous story, and a great ball.
Thanks to both of you.
Great story dad!
Jim
Great story. I had a friend named Scott. When he was a kid, he was with his family and they were driving past Shea and Al Weiss hit a homer into the car window. He said the baseball was in his grandmothers museum ion her basement. We never got to see it, but we asked him a lot of questions about it. Wish I had that ball
Fitz