1950 Brooklyn Dodgers Autographed Ball- Thoughts?
 

Any Dodgers experts that could weigh in on if any autographs are clubhouse signatures and possible value. I am asking for a relatives elderly Aunt. The provenance seems very good. Thanks in advance. Jeff

Jackie looks clubhouse to me.

Thanks Kevin! Anyone else have any opinions about this ball or it's value?

Jeff

I'm not a true expert, but own many Jackie signatures and have learned a few things over the years. The Jackie looks a little unusual to me but there are two reasons I would be surprised if it was a clubhouse sig:

1) In general, unless a ball was 100% signed clubhouse, it would be passed around the team to be signed firt and only then filled in by people in the clubhouse. Because of this (in my experience), if you find a clubhouse signature, you will generally find the signatures underneath it are also clubhouse signatures since they would start after the players finished. It is possible that Jackie had not signed and there were no other spots left to sign so a clubhouse attendant signed on the Spalding logo, but I doubt it.)

2) Generally, clubhouse signatures are all the same color since they were using a single pen. This ball is signed with many different pens, and Jackie's is signed with a black pen. Given this reality, I am quite confident that a clubhouse attendant was not signing the whole panel

Completely agree with Jeff on both points. There are a lot of Brooklyn Team-signed Balls that have multiple clubhouse sigs, but I don't think this is one of them. The clubhouse examples are almost always done in the same ink on the same panel.

Thanks guys. I have introduced the owner of the ball to Mike Root of CAS for authentication.

Jeff

I would be very surprised if there are not some clubhouse sigs on this ball. Charlie DiGiovanna filled in the missing players on team balls and any from this era with no clubhouse sigs are pretty rare. Robinson is tough to tell because of where it was signed but it looks OK based on the Robinson. For sure Campy is good and most of them look OK but Shotten is often a clubhouse as are Snider, Reese, Furillo, Cox, Hodges, and some others. Don’t be surprised if at least a few are deemed clubhouse.

I think you are definitely right about the propoensity for clubhouse sigs. Regarding, DiGiovanna, I saw an article that he worked for the team before, but only joined the Dodgers dugout in 1952. If that is accurate, I would imagine he only really started signing for the team at that point and it might have been someone else in 1950. (Looking at the Jackie signature, it definitely does not look like a DiGiovanna, but I was unsure if a different clbuhouse attendant was signing in 1950.)

https://www.psacard.com/articles/art...row-digiovanna

I believe Charlie was the batboy earlier than that. He was the 1947 NL All Star bat boy and he was already 17 at that time so I assume he had been a bat boy prior to that year.

Certainly, 1950 autographed baseballs often had clubhouse signatures which possibly were signed by someone other than DiGiovanna.

The Robinson on this ball looks to be legitimate based on the last name. Obviously, the "Jackie" is not really legible.

At any rate whether "The Brow" or someone else, likely some clubhouses are on the ball.