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Old 06-02-2008, 05:44 PM
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Default Signed Ruth Ball question

Posted By: Jamie

I have a Ruth Ball I am looking to sell. A guy I know told me he tought it would be worth around 7K, I was offered 6K for it. Just wondering if anyone could help me place a value on this ball... and if 6K is a good price to sell it...I am the third owner and I have full history dating this ball back to the exact day it was signed... any help is greatly appreciated:

The ball has an inscription of "Enterprise Studios 5-7-48" on it. Which is 3 months before babe died. I asked the guy who sold me the ball where he got it from. He explained it was his fathers ball and his father got it from a guy who worked directly for Enterprise Studios who originally had the ball signed.

So I did some research on my end to find out what enterprise studios was all about and looked up Ruths autobiography to find out if Babe was out in California during the date on the ball. The findings were surprising. Enterprise Studios was behind a movie called "The Babe Ruth Story" released in 1948. According to my research Babe flew out to California in spring 1948 for the movie as he was a "technical advisor" on the set. The ball I have is dated May 7th 1948.

Check out the article for yourself. I will post the link right below this quote from it. The quote is under the section TRAVELING AGAIN

"Babe went to Florida for spring training in 1948 and met with Joe McCarthy, Ted Williams, and others, but he looked worse than ever. He said he felt 90 years old on his 53rd birthday; he was soon back in New York. His next major trip was to Hollywood, where he was billed as the technical advisor for the film version of The Babe Ruth Story, which was then being rushed through production to beat the inevitable. The Ruths wound up never seeing any of the scenes being filmed, and the Babe's "advising" consisted of posing for pictures showing star William Bendix how to hold a bat. It was just as well; Bendix obviously wasn't a very good student, and the picture was a cliché-ridden travesty.On Sunday, June 6, a tanned and emaciated Ruth gave a copy of the completed manuscript for The Babe Ruth Story to Yale University baseball captain George Bush, who couldn't foresee that photographs of the moment would be used during his successful presidential campaign 40 years later. "

Link to the article:

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/babe-ruth43.htm

Based on all of this information, Babe was in Florida for spring training which is around March/April of 1948 and his next major trip was out to California. The date of May 7th 1948 coincides with this article. It puts Ruth in California at Enterprise Studios for the making of The Babe Ruth Story soon after March/April of 1948 and before June 6th 1948 when he handed a copy of the script to President Bush.

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