Jimmy and Brad,
Those are some unbelievably cool one of a kind pieces! Congrats to both of you!
I suspect that this thread is going to be terrific, because I'm guessing that many of us have some great one of a kind pieces to share.
I've got quite a few that I would throw into this category in my personal collection, so I decided to share some items that I've never shown on net54.
Here are some cool ones:
1) This is one of the handwritten pages that Angels GM Harry Dalton used while negotiating Nolan Ryan's Angels contract in 1975. It provides an interesting study as to how team brass thinks in terms of the negotiating process.
This is really the tip of the iceberg, as I own
all of the original documents (or copies) that were involved in the back and forth between the Angels and Ryan's camp (Ryan himself as well as his agent) for his 1973, 1975 and final contract with the Halos in 1979. There are literally dozens of handwritten and typed docs that cover each contract. Every time I read through these I can't believe how interesting they are!
2) Here are the original home plate umpire lineup cards that were used in the famous Ryan vs. Ventura fight on 8/15/93 at Arlington. These came from AL home plate umpire Dale Scott that worked the dish in this game.
There is a great story behind how I found these as they happen to be one of my all-time favorite pickups from the National. I actually found these in a record
10 minutes after entering a Chicago National Convention about 10-12 years ago!
Background story: A dealer that set up in the front of the National had a stack of lineup cards from umpire Dale Scott on his table. After watching me pour through them, he finally asked if there was something specific I was looking for? I mentioned that I collected Nolan Ryan. He said that he had something really cool that was related to Ryan that came from this collection, but he had it in his brief case and was not going to sell them. I asked to see what he had anyway, and he pulled out these two lineup cards. When he handed them to me, he asked if I knew the significance of them was? I immediately responded to him that I did, but did he? To make a long story short, we negotiated and I walked away smiling as I knew I had a great one-of-a-kind item to add to my advanced Ryan collection.
Take a look at Dale Scott's notes regarding the fight that he wrote on the back of the Rangers home white lineup card. I believe that he wrote down certain short details that he would need to report back to the league following the game.
Down the line I had both of these lineup cards signed. Note that the home Rangers card is signed on the front by both Nolan and Robin Ventura. This was
unbelievably tough to get done because Ventura has never wanted to sign anything related to this game due to embarrasment, from what I have heard from people that know him personally. How I managed to get this done is a story in of itself, but I believe that it makes for an unbelieveable one-of- a-kind collectible that many from our generation can relate to a 47 year old Texas legend Ryan taking young Ventura to the woodshed...
Don't mess with Texas!
