Little Red Riding Hood & Her Babe Ruth Signed 700th Homerun Day Ticket

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by Scott Garner

Excellent detective work, Lance and Dave!

Please also note the following facts and observations:

1) The 1932 Tigers ticket is from the LEFT side of the ticket, not the right side. Tigers tickets from every one of these years was horizontal on the left and vertical on the right. The vertical stub is the correct portion of the stub that was to be given to the patron, thus they are called "patron's stubs"

2) The left side of the ticket is what is referred to in the ticket collecting hobby as an "usher's stub". This is the portion of the ticket that the ticket taker was to deposit in the ticket box as the patron entered the stadium. Occasionally (rarely) a ticket taker would hand the patron the wrong side of the stub. I've always taken this to be the work of an inexperienced or new ticket taker. Usher ticket stubs like these show up in the hobby, but only about 5% of the time. One notable exception to this would be St. Louis Cardinals tickets from the 1970's and 1980's. The Cards had a habit of reselling usher's stub tickets to historic games such as Bob Forsch's 2nd no-hitter and Steve Carlton's 300th win. There are LOTS of usher's stub tickets to these games out there as a result, FWIW.

3) The difference in ticket price noted by Lance, $1.40 vs. $1.60 does NOT eliminate Tigers tickets from the year 1937. This is merely a difference in ticket price because of seat location. Lower deck 1st tier box seats sold for a premium, $1.60, during this era as opposed to the standard $1.40 for upper reserved seats or lower deck reserved seats. This is common at all stadiums.

4) The Tigers kept their seat prices and ticket stock appearance steady for MANY years (perhaps 10+ years), which makes solving this puzzle challenging.

5) Please note that by 1945 Tigers tickets were $1.50 for upper reserved seats and $1.80 for lower reserved seats.

6) The "military green" ticket color exhibited by the "Ruth 700" ticket was common for many years at Briggs Stadium (Tiger Stadium). I recall seeing tickets of this color as late as 1952 or so.

7) The ticket could possibly be from 1939 or 1941, because the Tigers did play at Briggs Stadium on July 13th and the ticket prices were most likely the same.
When I re-checked Dave's work about the Tigers playing out of town for several of these years he is correct.

8) I am beginning to believe that the ticket is most likely from 1934 and Ruth's 700 game. Finding a date stamp that is, to my eye, identical to the other Emergency tickets in the Tigers 1934 lot that sold on eBay, would be extremely challenging. Date stamps are a bit like typewriters; they each have their own unique font and size since different companies manufactured them. The stamp was applied at the same angle on the "Ruth 700" ticket as it was to the other Emergency tickets from the Yankees series surrounding 700 in 1934. Briggs Stadium issued all of their tickets from one very small ticket booth at the corner of the stadium. It's very likely that one ticket office employee was in charge of all stamping of tickets during this period of time. Same angle of stamping, same date stamp used in application of the stamp. The ink applied to the 700 ticket appears to be old, not recent, FWIW.

If the Babe Ruth signature holds up under scrutiny of the Babe Ruth sig experts, I would now not exclude this ticket as possibly being from the Ruth 700 game.
Just my 2 cents...

All good information, and Scott's attention to and evaluation of the details is much appreciated. I've definitely learned a thing or two (or three) about tickets as a result of this thread, (which is more of an education than I expected going into it ). I always appreciate your breakdowns of the information at hand, Scott, as opposed to my "lookee here what I found!"