Babe Ruth’s 1920 Uniform Sells For $4.4 Million At Auction

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Babe Ruth, King Of The Sports Memorabilia World

Nearly sixty-four years after his death, Babe Ruth set another record on Sunday May 20, 2012 . His circa 1920 Yankees road jersey sold at SCP auctions for a staggering $4.4 million.

Photo © SCP auctions

This eclipses the previous highest amount paid for a piece of sports memorabilia, a Honus Wagner baseball card, which sold in 2008 for $2.8 million.

To put the amount of the sale price in some perspective, Babe Ruth earned approximately $910,000 during his entire major league baseball playing career from 1914 -1935. This of course does not account for inflation. In modern dollars with inflation Ruth would have earned $15.3 million.

Also Ruth made vast amounts of money during the off-season, barnstorming and doing various product endorsements and personal appearances.

How would Ruth have felt about his uniform selling for more than he made his entire career? I’d like to think Ruth would have had a good laugh at that fact.

Babe Ruth, second from left, with his Yankee teammates, early 1920’s

Here is a photograph of Babe Ruth early in his New York Yankee career during spring training, possibly wearing the multi-million dollar uniform.

On a side note

The Kansas City Royals defeated the New York Yankees last night, May 21 at Yankee Stadium by a score of 6-0.  What made me notice this otherwise unremarkable game was what the New York Times said today in the sports section:

But the clutch-hitting woes of the Yankees — not just their wheezing All-Star first baseman — remained for another game, a 6-0 loss to the Kansas City Royals in front of 39,229 fans.

Anyone attending or watching the game on television knows the announced attendance of 39,229 was a joke. Looking at the mostly empty stadium, there were probably no more than 8,000 people attending the dreary game, which was played under a constant, steady rain.

The idea that baseball attendance is counted not by clicks of the turnstile, but by tickets sold is ridiculous. It’s another slight problem in a laundry list of things that MLB should address before baseball becomes completely irrelevant.

Squealer’s End

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What Happens To Squealer’s

This is not The Sopranos or The Godfather.

75 years ago, gangsters did really nasty things to you, if you talked to the cops.

The back of this Acme news photograph sums it up:

Trussed from head to foot, the body of Samuel Silverman is examined by Deputy Medical Examiner Romeo Auerbach. The victim was found in a car parked in Brooklyn, N.Y. with three bullets in his skull. Police believe Silverman was killed for “putting the finger” on other men involved in a hold up, for which he was out on bail.  July 16, 1937

Silverman , 25, who lived at 869 Hopkinson Avenue, Brooklyn, was found in front of 324 East 91st Street, Brooklyn on July 15, 1937. The body was discovered at 5 pm by a youth who happened to glance inside the parked car.

Silverman had been arrested Continue reading →

Classic Hollywood #13 – Betty Grable & Marilyn Monroe

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Candid Photographs of Marilyn Monroe

Instead of the typical movie publicity or glamor photographs of Marilyn Monroe, we thought we’d highlight three photographs that show Marilyn in a bit of a different light.

Betty Grable and her How To Marry A Millionaire (1953) co-star Marilyn Monroe emerge from a Hollywood restaurant. Grable who was 20th Century Fox’s blond bombshell for most of the 1940’s was being “replaced” by Monroe. Grable was relieved as she was getting tired of fighting with Daryl F. Zanuck, Fox’s studio chief. Supposedly she told Marilyn privately, “Honey, I’ve had my time in the spotlight, now it’s your turn!”

Marilyn takes a break and kneels on the steps of a brownstone while filming Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch (1955).  A portion of the film was shot on location in New York City. The brownstone where the lead character, Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell) lives with Marilyn subletting the apartment above him, is located at 164 East 61st Street. The building is still there, though somewhat modified.

Marilyn Monroe with a very dour looking Joe DiMaggio in Florida in 1961. Monroe was visiting DiMaggio, who was a special instructor to the New York Yankees during spring training. After their nine month marriage ended in divorce in 1954, the couple remained friends and got closer as the years passed. There were rumors that Monroe and DiMaggio were contemplating remarrying one another when Monroe passed away in 1962.

Jim McCrary, Rock Photographer Dies at 72, Famous For Carole King Tapestry Photos

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Jim McCrary Photographed Over 300 Album Covers For A&M Records

Cover Photograph to Carole King’s Tapestry Album

Jim McCrary who will be remembered for taking in 1971 one of the most iconic album cover photos in music history, Carole King’s Tapestry, died  at the age of 72 on April 29, 2012 of complications from a chronic nervous system disorder at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Palo Alto, CA.

Jim McCrary self-portrait 1978

McCrary was a self-taught photographer beginning his career in 1952. He worked for many years as staff photographer for several portrait studios and in the photography department of Rockwell International during the 1950’s and 1960’s. McCrary joined Herb Alpert’s and Jerry Moss’ A&M Records in 1967 as chief photographer. For the next seven years he photographed most of A&M’s albums, publicity and advertising work.  Among his better known images are of Joe Cocker, Cat Stevens, Gram Parsons & The Carpenters.

  

McCrary left rock photography in the late 70’s after he felt he had lost touch with the music of the bands he was working with.  His work won many awards from the Los Angeles & New York Art Directors Clubs, and appeared in several “Best” Album Cover books.

McCrary shared his talent and taught at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Tom Upton, who was once a student of McCrary’s in the 70’s said “…he was magnanimous and kind. He expected hard work and absolute transparency when reviewing work. He was the antithesis of the celebrity photographer as guru, popular at the time. He required no fealty or brown-nosing, just honesty and plain backgrounds so you had to engage your subject. He taught us about hard light and soft light in a portrait, and what the consequences were.  You, the subject, the light, and no bull.  His assignments were affectionately termed ‘McCrary Portraits’ by his students.”

Survivors include his son Jason McCrary and two brothers Wylee Dale McCrary and Doug McCrary.

To read the story about how Carol King’s Tapestry photo shoot unfolded, click here.

Cell Providers Policies On Blocking Unwanted Cell Phone Calls

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AT&T’s Terrible Policy on Blocking Harassing Marketers and Other Unwanted Cell Phone Calls

Being somewhat of a Luddite, after much reluctance, I purchased my first cell phone in 2000 through AT&T. To my delight there was a great feature which allowed you to block a phone call by entering the number into a blocked number list directly on the phone.  That number would then not be able to dial into the phone. I don’t know where the call actually went, or what message, if any, the caller heard and furthermore I didn’t care. All I know is that the feature effectively blocked calls from repeat offenders who were not supposed to be calling my cell phone number.

It was especially useful for blocking marketing calls (always unsolicited), where they were repeatedly calling me and running up my minutes. Continue reading →

When Lyrics Meant Something – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and “Ohio”

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May 4th Marks the Anniversary of Four Kent State University Students Murdered For Protesting The U.S. Invasion of Cambodia and the Vietnam War

Do today’s songs have meaning?

One of the things I am confronted with in the 21st century is the degraded state of music today, especially lyrically. Do people really listen to the lyrics of songs and give them any serious thought?  Or are the majority of songs being written not worthy of deep examination?

In the 1960’s and 70’s music listeners certainly did pay attention to the words being sung. They pored over lyric sheets which were inserted into LP albums with artwork that was meant to be contemplated, pondered, discussed, interpreted and argued over. Beginning with the shift to CD’s in the late eighties with their micro-printing of lyrics Continue reading →

On Patriotism, Loyalty and the U.S. Constitution

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2012 – Republican or Democrat?

On May Day (also called International Workers’ Day) which is now morphing into a day of general protest, not just workers rights, I found this nugget of wisdom from an 1864 magazine article. It makes you realize how far we have gone off track as a country when it comes to partisan politics and what is best for the country.

“Patriotism means love of the institutions and customs and peoples of one’s country in general. Loyalty is allegiance, not, as elsewhere or in former times, to kings and nobles, but to the Constitution and laws of our country in both its State and Federal forms. Loyalty to an administration or party may be disloyalty in the true sense of the word, and must be so, if the administration or party be itself unfaithful to the Constitution and laws. Our oath and duty of allegiance are to the Constitution, and not to any administration. The President is not the government, but an administrator of it, according to the laws of the Constitution, and he, as every other officer is sworn to administer it according to that standard and in allegiance to it. They owe the same allegiance we do.”

“The Causes and Dangers of Social Excitement” The Knickerbocker Vol. LXIII No. 6 June 1864 – Page 486

Old, Curious and Unusual Epitaphs

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Some Selections From “Here Lies” A Book About Graveyard Epitaphs

This book from 1900 whose full title is: Here Lies: Being a Collection of Ancient & Modern, Humorous and Queer Inscriptions from Tombstones compiled and edited by W.H. Howe, published by The New Amsterdam Book Company contains 197 pages of fascinating epitaphs, mostly from Great Britain. It was originally published in England in 1891 as Everybody’s Book of Epitaphs.

It’s difficult to believe that hundreds of years ago people were this creative about their own demise. Probably in many cases it was the friends and relatives of the deceased who were responsible for these final words etched in stone. Do you know what you would want written as your epitaph?

Here are a few of the better ones from this out of print gem:

Stephen Remnant

Here’s a Remnant of life, and a Remnant of death,
Taken off both at once in a remnant of breath;
To mortality this gives a happy release,
For what was a Remnant proves now the Whole piece.

 

Mr. Edward Pardon (a bookseller)

Here lies poor Ned Pardon, from misery freed,
Who long was a booksellers hack;
He led such a damnable life in this world,
I don’t think he’ll ever come back.

 

Continue reading →

Bill Moose Skowron Dies at 81 – An Appreciation of a Kind Man

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Casey Stengel and Bill “Moose” Skowron

Bill “Moose” Skowron died today, April 27, 2012 of congestive heart failure in Arligton Heights, IL.

In this news photograph above, the caption says, “Bill Moose Skowron reports for his first day, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, September 19.”

The only problem with this is that Moose’s first game was April 13, 1954 and it was not at Comiskey Park.  And the Yankees did not play in Chicago on September 19, 1954.

So what is the answer to this problem? Continue reading →