[Deadball]

You can have your provenance, Jonathan. I have the bat itself, which is all anyone needs.

Your provenance and attribution relies on the word of a man who honestly came to believe over time he owned Black Betsy but who also had a chance to make half a million dollars to several million dollars by saying so in the strongest possible terms and the recollection of an eighty year-old man trying to remember fifty year-old conversations. Might these statements and recollections be subjected to some critical thinking? The photographs you reproduced in the catalog and the absence of earlier photographs supports my thesis that the bat you sold, which I will now call White Betsy or Lil’ Barnstormer, was never used by Jackson in the major leagues. All one can say is that it is a store model, Spalding bat Jackson used in the 1930s while barnstorming.

Your comparison of the “evidence” you have to the prosecution’s evidence in the OJ Simpson trial is inapposite. Prosecutors in the Simpson case had strong physical evidence in size 12 footprints matching Simpson’s and a serious cut Simpson sustained on the night of the murders. Mathematician John Allen Paulos calculated the probability those two pieces of physical evidence might turn up together at about 1 in 4,000. That is pretty strong evidence of guilt. What period evidence do you have that Lil’ Barnstormer is Black Betsy and not just a barnstorming bat? Can you present a shred of period, documentary evidence that Lil’ Barnstormer existed prior to the 1930s? Can you present a shred of evidence based on the bat itself that Lil’ Barnstormer could have been made prior to about 1916? Black Betsy, readers will recall, was made in 1901.

With respect to the physical evidence presented by the bat itself, you are forced to rely on three theories. The first is the “magic bat” theory, which is that Jackson liked Black Betsy so much he was afraid to use it or even be photographed holding it while in the major leagues, but that this fear disappeared while he was barnstorming. The second is the “bat within a bat” theory, which is that Black Betsy was black and extremely long with a thick handle, but when asked only to “finish it,” Spalding removed the black finish, made the bat shorter and the handle thinner and then applied not only the Spalding stamping but additional stampings designating a store model. The third is the “Spalding was wrong” theory, which is that even though they had Jackson's Black Betsy as a model, Spalding produced a line of Black Betsy bats for retail sale that look nothing like Lil’ Barnstormer and everything like the black bats Jackson was always photographed holding during his major league career.

Do you really want to discuss probabilities? Estimate the probability of the “magic bat,” “bat within a bat,” and “Spalding was wrong” theories each being true independently. Now multiply those three numbers together. The number you just calculated is the probability Lil’ Barnstormer is Black Betsy. Does any reader come up with a probability better than 1 in 1,000?

I can always forgive someone who makes an honest mistake. The question is what people do when confronted with new evidence. Heritage employees accessed my profile twice prior to the auction, indicating they were aware of my postings. Yet you failed to ask me any questions, did not ask for additional information, and Heritage did not make any of the evidence I presented, including multiple period documents that directly contradict the Black Betsy attribution, available to bidders. When you did respond on net54, you did so in a different thread and without attempting to answer a single question of the many I raised. You don't owe it to me. You owe it to the people who bid on Lil' Barnstormer.

You fall back on the idea “PSA doesn’t just throw around Game Used 10 ratings,” even though their rating was given before I presented my evidence and as if PSA’s rating can take the place of your own due diligence. There was a time when people in banking said something like: “Moody’s doesn’t just throw around AAA ratings for mortgage backed securities.” That thought saved them from actually having to analyze the mortgages themselves, and it did not work out so well. Letters from authenticators occasionally play a similar role in the sale of sports memorabilia, saving the auction houses from having to confront the real questions raised by analysis.

You can say it ain’t so, Jonathan, but I am afraid it is.

~Take the red pill

I started a blog, which you can find at whitebetsy.wordpress.com. In it from time to time I will share my analysis of baseball memorabilia offered for auction or sale. I promise the next one will not involve an item offered by Heritage.

Jim Johnson