Today's Auction Find

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Found this at a local estate auction today. Now if I could only find a program for this game.

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Posted By: barrysloate

That is clearly an exhibition game. Is it possible that the Lincoln Athletics was a black team?

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Barry, the Lincoln Athletics were the Class A ball club for the Philadelphia A's. I collect Lincoln Athletics items and they are extremely difficult to come by - even though I live in Lincoln and am searching all the time you just don't come across it very often.

Here's a couple of snapshots of 1948 Lincoln A's players - you may recognize them.




That ballpark is still standing - although it is only used for Legion and high school games now...the mill in the background is still standing as well. I am only about 5 minutes away from it.

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Posted By: clint

Good score Dan. I have an exhibition ticket from Wichita playing the NY Giants from the 1950's. I think these were pretty common tune up games for the minors.

-Clint

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Yep, common tuneups, but uncommon ticket stubs. Connie Mack owned all of the A's minor league teams and I'm sure he got good use out of them.

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Posted By: Clint

Very rare tickets indeed. That's the only one I have and only a few from the regular season as well. Did Connie Mack own The Lincoln team or was this game played in Philadelphia? Connie's facsimle signature and picture really pep up that ticket.

-Clint

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Mack owned the Lincoln team up to 1952. The Lincoln Team was then sold to the Milwaukee Braves and Lincoln's name was changed to the Chiefs.

edited to add: This game was played in Lincoln. I just looked at the 1948 schedule and it looks like Philadelphia squeezed the game in on an off day between a series at St Louis and Chicago.

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Posted By: Clint

I think the Giants game was scheduled during an off day too. I haven't been able to find it yet. I did find my Wichita Braves tickets where they played Omaha. Do you collect Omaha items? I didn't see any on your site, but there is another Lincoln item on there I haven't seen before.

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Posted By: barrysloate

Dan- if you like Nellie Fox I have a great childhood memory of him. In the late 1960's my friend and I went to Shea Stadium to see a Mets-Astros game, as he was a big Astros fan. Nellie Fox was their first base coach at the time. We had terrific seats in the front row behind first base.

My friend Steve had all his change in his top pocket and at one point he leaned over and the change fell on the ballfield. When the half inning was over, Nellie Fox ran over to us, bent down and picked up every last coin, and handed it to Steve. I can still picture that moment and I will never forget it.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Clint, I haven't really gone out of my way to collect Omaha items - and they are much easier to obtain except for those darn N172's. Maybe someday I'll expand out that far...perhaps sooner than later as I just noticed Mastro has a 1969 Omaha Royals uniform up in their next Collector Classic auction.

Barry, that's a great story. Nellie Fox was my dad's favorite player...I'm sure he picked Fox because of his Lincoln ties - My dad would have been too young to remember Fox when he played in Lincoln, but being in a small town you hear stories from the old timers about all of the players who went on to fame in the majors that got their starts here in Lincoln and I'm sure my dad latched onto that as a kid. There was no minor league team here in town when I was a kid. All we had was the Husker baseball team. Pete O'Brien was my favorite on the Huskers in the late 1970s and I followed him all the way through his major league career....at a time when most kids idolized Rickey Henderson, Ozzie Smith and Don Mattingly my favorite player was Pete O'Brien. I still have a huge box full of his cards because everyone that knew me would just give them to me as he was considered a "common". Believe it or not, but I have a binder with about 200 different issues for O'Brien...you wouldn't think there would be that many, but there was. I stopped looking for the ones I didn't have, but I still have that binder...I probably couldn't give it away today.

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Posted By: Clint

Dan, I just found the ticket stapled to a program. My memory must be getting worse as the exhibition game was between the NY Giants and the Cleveland Indians in Wichita, 1950.