Speaking of wives...Mel Ott??
 

I know of the clubhouse signatures on Giants team signed balls of the period, but is anyone aware of whether or not Mel Ott's wife is a known ghost signer. I won one of the lots from the Ott Estate and one of the photos has his signature on the back. It was either him or her who put it there and it looks like him. Just not sure if she was adept at it as well.

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Except he was just asking if Ott's wife is a known ghost. That should be answerable (by someone a lot more knowledgeable than me) without seeing anything.

Here is an image.

http://i792.photobucket.com/albums/y...psc1ncgbdf.jpg

To me it looks very good. Again, it comes from his estate. My only question is whether his wife ghost signed for him at all and just how good at it was she if she did?

This is written more as an identification of who is on the photo on the front (Mel Ott) as it is attached to another similar photo where that person's first name (Zeke) is put at the top of the back of the photo, either by Ott or his wife, identifying who is pictured on that one.

Any help would be appreciated.

Not sure if Mel’s wife signed for him... i do know that she would clip his sig from canceled checks to accomodate requests after his death... i dont believe that this is mel’s hand... looks like a press photo. It was common of photographers and or newspaper workers to write the names of subjects on the reverse of photos so that they could be accurately portrayed in print.

I hope this helps,
DaveQUOTE=btcarfagno;1810887]Here is an image.

http://i792.photobucket.com/albums/y...psc1ncgbdf.jpg

To me it looks very good. Again, it comes from his estate. My only question is whether his wife ghost signed for him at all and just how good at it was she if she did?

This is written more as an identification of who is on the photo on the front (Mel Ott) as it is attached to another similar photo where that person's first name (Zeke) is put at the top of the back of the photo, either by Ott or his wife, identifying who is pictured on that one.

Any help would be appreciated.[/QUOTE]

My quibble with that would be that this comes from Ott's estate, that his name is written in full while Bonura's name is just the more familiar "Zeke" with no last name written (as if written by a friend...not a photographer), and the formation of the letter "O" is so unusual...who else writes a capital "O" like that?

That doesn't look like his typical signature, either for documents or for autograph signing. But I agree that it's strange that it would be done in cursive and the other name look different. I would look for other examples with that kind of loop in the 'O', the different arm to the 'M' and the different right-hand side of the 'M', especially on signed documents. I looked around for a short time and didn't see anything.

It looks similar, but with some differences,
Here are two of mine for comparison

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7553/...2deab4f3_c.jpg

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4257/...fa196df9_c.jpg

Whoever wrote on that photo did in fact spell 'Mel Ott' correctly.

Yeah I'm thinking you guys are right. This is a bit more like what his signature on a baseball tends to look like, not a flat. I was confusing the two. The sloped and sharp-at-the-top second hump in the letter "M" is very consistent with Ott on flats.

Wishful thinking on my part I suppose.