OT: - Your one piece of prized sports memorabilia | Page 3 | The Boneyard

OT: Your one piece of prized sports memorabilia

I have an awards program signed by Jesse Owens - famed Olympic sprinter.

Got it when I was 15. It's now in a safe deposit box with my coin collections.
 
A piece of the court from the 1999 Championship game.

A poster of the opening tip of the 1999 Championship game, signed by Jim Calhoun.
 
Clingan signed team photo from 2023 championship now on my grandson’s bedroom dresser. It ain’t gettin’ better!
 
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Deepster said:
My Dad took me to a Sox game in 1975. I was 9. After the game, at a stop light, Luis Tiant pulled alongside us in a gold Cadillac. My Dad scrambled to get something for him to sign and the light turned green. Luis reached down, picked up a ball and tossed it to him through the windows. The ball was signed by that whole 1975 team. Evans, Rice, Lynn, Yaz, Tiant, Bill Lee, Zimmer, Fisk, Petrocelli. I don't display it because it was signed in ball point pen and faded a little, so it's tucked away in a box somewhere.
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I have a 1977 ball with all those sigs and more. My mom was the Avon Lady to the wife of Charlie Moss, the long time Sox trainer, who got the ball signed signed to give to me. Interestingly, my brother has a 1967 Impossible Dream season signed ball.

My other two items are a 2004 championship hat signed by Emeka Okafor and my Dear to Dream hard cover book that I was able to get signed by Jim Calhoun.

Oh, I almost forgot, I have some Sports Illustrated UConn Championship magazines that I framed, with Emeka's signature on one and Diana Taurasi on another one. I bought two so that I could frame them together since one side of the cover had Emeka on it with Diana on the other. In that frame I have two other UConn Magazines, but I can't remember what those are since they are packed away. I think one was a pre-NCAA Tournament SI mag and the other a preseason one.

I also have 3 mags framed set from the 1999 championship season with Khalid El-Amin on one cover and I think Ricky Moore on one of the others. I think Rip is on the 3rd one. Wow! I have to find some space somewhere to put those up. My current wife has become a big UConn fan and would love to see those hung somewhere in our home. Her late brother was an artist so there's not a lot of available wall space. Maybe my combo home office-spare bedroom would be a good candidate.

Though one of my favorite memories is one of the times me and HooperScooper went into Gampel Pavillion to watch the team practice when we saw JC look up at us and shake his head when clearing everyone else but us out of the building. I think it was Pat Sellers at the time, whom we had gotten to know (we knew Tom Moore as well), vouched for us. I think JC recognized us since we had done this yearly pilgrimage at least once or twice before. After receiving the stare of death, we looked at each other and laughed. I'll never forget that. I think he took a long look at me and shook his head when he signed his book years later...just kidding about that last part. :)

So many fun UConn memories. Maybe someone should start a thread on that topic or best sports memories if one has not already been started. I have a few others that come to mind but I've written far too much already.
 
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I had Thurmon Munson autograph a baseball when he played for the Manchester(NH) Yankees. My Dad used to take us to the Waterbury Indians' game. Someone the family has Y. A. Tittle's autograph.
 
Everytime I get a new wallet I take whats in the old one and put it in the new one. Don’t laugh you are looking at a Nate Archibald autograph and from 1981 most of Waterbury Reds. I think the most prolific player to come through there was Gary Redus. I think he played catcher for the Reds for awhile. There may have been others. I used to have a Jim Spencer autograph too on a small piece of paper like the Nate one. I also have the Boston newspapers from 2004. “Why not us?!?”
 
In 1980 my grandparents took my brother and I to the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. On one of the days there we watched a US Hockey team practice before their semi final game - Herb Brooks flipped us a puck on the way out and we take turns keeping it. He has it now but this thread will make me ask him for it for a while! Maybe the greatest upset in the history of sports - certainly right up there
 
Vuce said:
In 1980 my grandparents took my brother and I to the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. On one of the days there we watched a US Hockey team practice before their semi final game - Herb Brooks flipped us a puck on the way out and we take turns keeping it. He has it now but this thread will make me ask him for it for a while! Maybe the greatest upset in the history of sports - certainly right up there
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I was just watching Miracle yesterday and still get charged up watching.
 
Can't compare to the 1980 puck from Herb Brooks. Very cool.

But I caught a puck -snatched it out of the air- at a Chicago Blackhawks game versus Gretzky's Oilers back in the 80s. Like an idiot I started banging the puck on the glass, glaring at the Oilers and acting the fool. Still have the puck in the cellar somewhere.
 
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Travelman6 said:
Don't collect a heck of a lot but I caught not one but two foul balls once in a minor league game, somewhere up in the attic. Lost an autographed Travis Knight jersey years ago.
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I got a bat that came flying into the crowd at a minor league game in St. Pete. There was a guy sitting behind me, with a big camera...bat smashed the camera to pieces, landed in front of the dude, I grabbed it. The dude did not care, he was so disraught over his camera...35 years ago, the bat is still in my shed on the wall....
 
Hey Guys,

In 1957, as a 12-year old, I was lucky enough to buy two separate five packs of Topps baseball cards, the ones with the flat stick of double bubble gum inside, a day apart, at my favorite downtown corner bodega - Norman's..

What are the odds that each of those packs held inside a brand-new, 1956 Mickey Mantle Triple Crown Topps card inside?

Sure, I valued them as a NYC/Yankee fan, youngster baseball player would back then, but the modern collection industry had not yet become the Billion Dollar insanity it is today. Both cards probably ended up in shoe boxes in the top of a distant closet of my NYC past. Out of sight, out of mind. Never thought about them again.

Fast forward to 2019. My mother had a serious health issue that required many very expensive procedures costing way above what her insurance would cover. She called me for help (cash). Unfortunately, it was unusually tight for me at that time & I didn't have quite enough available cash to share & cover the costs.

Guessing, I told her to check inside my old sports foot locker if it was still out in her garage pile of junk which she'd schlepped around all those years because I didn't care about all the hoops trophies & no-hitter baseballs from high school anymore at all. And mom's are the gatherers, right?

She found a thick baseball folder in the locker that I remembered making for a school project (using 1/4" plywood covers that I hand painted (stick figure baseball players) & shoelaces for binding - what a craftsman & artist! (Ha). The project was just a kid memorializing the 1958 MLB All-Star Game I went to with my grandfather at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore that year. Man, I miss him so much!

I had cut out pictures of all the players in that game from the game program, taped them on the pages & covered them over with sticky clear plastic sleeves to preserve them.

It turns out that BOTH of those Triple Crown 1956 Mickey Mantle Tops cards were well-preserved & still inside that momento project, which I'd thought was long gone to history. Both were in MINT CONDITION because of those clear covers & the fact that they hadn't been handled once since I put them in my little All-Star book in 1958 - 61 years(!) before my mom found them again in that foot locker in her garage pile of junk.

To make a long story longer, in 2019, a collector paid me $40K+ for one of those special cards - which I gave to my mother to cover her procedures. The other Triple Crown '56 Mickey, I still have - somewhere around in this house - in MY pile of junk. I have no idea where it is though. Oh, the things people value, huh?...Sheesh!

Sometimes life is just like the great Mose Allison sang long ago, "Well it weren't too crazy. It was...just enough. Baby it was, just enough"

Father Demo

PS: I once got ejected from Yankee Stadium in '61 for sitting behind the Mick & the monuments out at 461' in dead center, for tossing ice cream sundae tops at the Mick on a playing-hookey, hot 'n humid, early summer kinda day, with the Yankees up by 17 runs! -father demo-
 
Here's a short video of that long-lost 1956 Mickey Mantle Triple Crown Winner Topps baseball card that literally saved the day & life of my mother from the proceeds (she lived for years after that lucky day). I got two - from two packs of five - bought two days apart - I got at our neighborhood bodega.

8bCV1rxLEBs

Father Demo.
 
One thing I neglected to mention - an important part - both of my 1956 Mickey Mantle Triple Crown Winner Topps cards were signed by The Mick.

A NY Journal American Sports beat reporter named Til Ferdenzi lived in the next apartment from my family when I was growing up in NYC. He covered the Yankees for nearly 25 years, sitting in the writers' boxes out at Yankee Stadium & hanging out with the Yankees all the time on the road & at home. Everyone trusted Til.

Til knew that I was a real Yankees fan & also a very good pitcher when I was young. He even wrote a little piece about me & my team in his daily paper when my little league team went undefeated, won the NYS LL Championship, & I threw ten no hitters & never lost a game at 12 years old. Great to have a friend in high places - Til also alerted Yankee & Mets scouts about me when my success continued through high school. (note: hoops was the game I loved to play though).

Til was also very generous & only had a single daughter. So, any foul ball that ended up in his box at Yankee Stadium, Til would grab it, get it signed (sometimes by the foul-off player, sometimes part of or the whole Yankee team & he'd drop it off in our mail box or in person the next day. Sometimes, Til would play catch with me out in the street & talk Yankees with me - a great blessing back in those days when the home team hardly ever lost & won pennants & championships every year. He really made baseball come alive for me & built up my confidence. And my dad couldn't care less about me or baseball.

Because of Til Ferdenzi's generosity, I actually was loaded with many, many Golden-era Yankee signed balls. cards & memorabilia. I even became a little jaded by it because it all became so normal & he loved doing it for the neighborhood kid.

But when I brought Til those two '56 Mick Triple Crown cards to get signed, I had no idea how valuable that would become or how amazingly easy it was for Til with his nightly post-game relationship & beers with the players, including the Mick. I was SO LUCKY that Til Ferdenzi - who also wrote several books about the players over the years - adopted me as his surrogate "baseball son." Several times, he took me into the lockers room to meet players. I was in heaven. He really helped me survive my dysfunctional home situation & father's constant rath.

So Lucky! Thank You Til Ferdenzi for being my "baseball dad."

Father Demo
 
Yardigan said:
I got a bat that came flying into the crowd at a minor league game in St. Pete. There was a guy sitting behind me, with a big camera...bat smashed the camera to pieces, landed in front of the dude, I grabbed it. The dude did not care, he was so disraught over his camera...35 years ago, the bat is still in my shed on the wall....
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Guy's taking inventory of his broken camera, broken teeth and broken dreams.
You grab the bat. Ruthless.
 
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Signed Don Larsen photo. My grandfather played in the minors with him
 
Photo from April 8, 1977 when we were ranked #1 in the nation. We were 36-1 at the time going into a 3 game series at #3 ranked Florida State. The guy on the right is "the Brat" , Eddie Stanky, our head coach. We split the first two games and lost the 3rd 5-4 in 11 innings. Great series and rivalry at that time. They even beat up our bus driver when he was getting into our bus during the game.
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Is this memorabilia or just a hat that went out of date really, really fast?

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A 3" trophy after winning a state championship. The bb team got a parade.

No complaints. I'd rather have the trophy.
 
The only thing I still have, A Bob Lilly autographed game jersey. Remains my favorite football player.
 
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