Babe Ruth autograph - opinions

[mschwade]

Originally Posted by Runscott

Thanks Jim (also Chris, David and Richard).

I purchased a Feb 8,1943 article from the 'NY Times', but unfortunately they only allowed me to pay for the article, but did not actually send it to me.

So all I have is the following abstract:

RUTH HAS A BIRTHDAY; Babe, 49, Helps in the Campaign to Sell War Bonds
Babe Ruth celebrated his forty-ninth birthday yesterday by lending a hand to the war effort. The Babe, nowhere near the 80 years, achieved recently by another great baseball figure, Connie Mack, is nevertheless too old for the armed forces, but he is doing what he can.

Congratulations Scott! Great piece.

[JimStinson]

The research is the "fun" part of collecting, In a similar vein a long time ago I bought a government postcard signed by Grover Cleveland Alexander , it was postmarked about three years before his death from a very small town in Texas, I mean SMALL population was less than 100 people and the town was in the middle of no where , Could not find any connection between Alexander and the GPC being postmarked from the small Texas town.

I researched it and found that he spent that part of his life either in Nebraska or LA , His wife kept leaving him and they had numerous break ups and reconciliations. But never a connection to that little town in Texas.

After I had owned it for a few years I happened to be driving through Texas on the interstate and the town was about 50 miles off the freeway so I thought "What the heck" , When I drove through there was NO downtown , not even really a town, ....It was a real mystery until I found the post office ....It was a tiny building no bigger than a walk in closet but........IT WAS RIGHT NEXT TO THE RAILROAD TRACKS , which happened to be on the old train route from Nebraska to LA. Mystery solved.

No doubt on one of his trips Alexander signed his fan mail , wrote his letters and when the train stopped to pick up or drop off mail in this tiny Texas town it ended up with the postmark.
______________________
jim@stinsonsports.com

Jim Stinson Buying and Selling Vintage autographs
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[Runscott]

Great story, Jim.

Jim encouraged my research by giving some ideas. As a result I was able to locate Bernie's family In the 1940 census - Anita was his Mother. I also found a valuable tool for digging through NYC census records for 1940 that doesn't appear to be available for other years or cities.