Baseball fave possessions- Nolan Ryan game used 4th no-hitter ball & 5000th K mitt
It's pretty tough to narrow down a 38 year collection to one single item, but I would like to show you my two favorite pieces. Anyway, here goes:
1) A game used ball to Nolan Ryan's 4th career no-hitter on 6/1/75 at Anaheim. Ryan tied Sandy Koufax's alltime record of 4 no-hitters in this game. What makes this especially cool is the story and provenance behind the ball.
Frank Worth was a roving photographer in Southern California that frequently took photos for the California Angels and Los Angeles Dodgers. After Ryan had successfully no-hit the Baltimore Orioles 1-0, Worth was in the Angels home clubhouse to take some photos to commemorating the event. He suggested taking some photos of Ryan holding up 4 balls with zeros hand drawn on the balls with felt marker. His photo of Ryan holding up the 4 balls and smiling became a rather famous image. I have included a look at the photo to remind you what it looks like. My ball is the one in the upper left.
After the photo shoot Ryan signed this ball with a personalized inscription that reads: "To Frank Best Wishes Nolan Ryan". Worth added "6/1/75" next to huge zero. On a different panel Ryan wrote " Glad you were here for the 4th. Hope you are here for the 5th". Pretty prophetic on Ryan's part that he felt he would throw another one (5th no-hitter). To make this ball even more interesting is the fact that Ryan almost pulled off a Johnny Vander Meer in his very next game on 6/6/75 against the Milwaukee Brewers. HOF great and HR champ (no steroids) Hank Aaron busted up Ryan's no-hit effort in the 6th inning with Ryan settling for a 2-hit 6-0 shutout over the Brew Crew. Worth was also in attendance of this game and he had Hank Aaron sign another side panel and added the notation "6/6/75" afterwords. It's really a great piece of baseball history, and for a die-hard Angels fan I love owning this in my personal collection...
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