This is the story of one well-traveled, multi-signed baseball. Its owner, Sam Ogle of Wisconsin, began a 39-year odyssey of collecting important player signatures on the baseball starting with Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson after the latter led the Washington Senators to their first World Series crown in 1924. Ogle simply sent the ball to Johnson, who lived in Coffeyville, Kansas, and asked for his autograph. Johnson obliged, signed it on the sweet spot and sent it back to Ogle. When Hall of Fame pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander helped the St. Louis Cardinals win the World Series two years later, Ogle repeated the procedure. Fifteen years after that, in 1941, he mailed the baseball to Lefty Grove in Lonaconing, Maryland, after the future Hall of Famer recorded his 300th and final win. Soon thereafter, the baseball was sent to the great Cy Young in Peoli, Ohio, who also obliged Ogle’s request for an autograph.
This lot features the aged and multi-signed baseball that now sports a total of 10 signatures on it. Other Hall of Fame hurlers who signed the baseball at some point during this nearly four-decade span included Kid Nichols (1951), Warren Spahn (1957) and Early Wynn (1963). During the course of the travels, other baseball greats came in contact with the baseball and added their signatures to it as well including Lew Burdette, who won three World Series games against the New York Yankees in 1957; Deacon Phillippe, who pitched the first World Series game ever against Cy Young in 1903; and Jimmy Archer, a former Chicago Cubs catcher who happened to befriend Ogle during the course of a Wisconsin Hall of fame dinner that was held in 1951. It’s simply an amazing collection of seven 300-game winners on one baseball along with three other signatures of note.
The baseball comes complete with a Letter of Authenticity from JSA which states that the Johnson, Young and Phillippe signatures were traced over at one point and that the many different notations and inscriptions on the baseball were added from an unknown hand at a later date. The original owner’s documentation of the baseball’s circuitous route is also included.