Taking Another Look At My 1930s Signed Baseball

I have a nice mystery on my hands with this signed baseball that I got from Heritage Auctions.  When I first got the ball, I thought it would be fun to try to figure out approximately when it was signed and by whom.  It looked like a lot of the signatures on the ball were from late 20s early 30s Washington Senators until I found one name who never played for them.  He was a Cardinal.  Hmm.

So, I want to first take an overview look at the ball and see what I can figure out, and then maybe see what some folks with better eyes than mine may be able to deduce as well.  The ball is a Spalding ONL baseball with Red and Black stitching.  After doing some Google searching, the ball is a 1929 - 1933 John Heydler Spalding ONL baseball.  One of the faded 'signatures' on the ball is the Heydler stamp.  Interesting.  It can be seen just below the Joe Cronin signature.  Some other names that I can make out on that panel are Ossie Bluege and Ed Gharrity.  I will cross reference these names on Baseball-reference.com and do a post about each individual name when I confirm them.

Here is a better shot of the 'Bluege' and 'Gharrity' signatures.  Again, once I confirm the name, I will do a blog post profiling the player.  This should be fun.

This panel has names that seem like they could be fairly easy to read.  I'm seeing: Someone that looks like Jack J something..., Bill Sherdel, Pauly Moore?, Les Ruhburg?.  I need to try to confirm all of these...

 Here is a better shot.  Looks like the top one could be Randy Moore, maybe.  I don't know.  The bottom one might be Les Richburg?

These are going to be tough.  I see Fred Macguire and Wes Smithwick?

Finally, these look like Sam West and Joe Kuchel?  We'll see.

So, I think doing the detective work on this will be a lot of fun.  I will write down the names that I think I see and cross reference them first with teams that Cronin played on.  Some of the names, like Bluege and Sam West are easy enough to read, so I think I should be able to do some relative age dating on the ball and come up with a possible team that this could have come from.  I wonder why the person got several Washington Senators on an ONL ball.  Maybe we'll never know.

I Finally Got an Antique Baseball

I picked up this awesome baseball from Ebay recently.  I have been looking for antique baseballs over the last couple months and have finally gotten one.  I had no idea how expensive they were (I've seen some figure eight style baseballs selling for $200.00 on ebay).

 After doing a Google search on antique baseballs, if this is an Official ball, then it would date to between 1901 to 1934.  The A. J. Reach company manufactured baseballs for the AL with red and blue stitching beginning in 1901 and ending in 1934.  Spalding made baseballs for the NL with black and red stitching starting in 1911.  Looking closely at the ball, the stitches look blue.  Some previous owner of the ball scratched 'Babe Ruth' into the ball.

No, there is no way it is an autograph.  It is clearly scratched into the ball.

I imagine some kid owned it back in the late 20s - early 30s and imagined themselves calling a home run shot.  What would be really awesome, but never able to be proven would be if this ball was a Ruth home run ball.  Or maybe a foul ball?  The speculation is endless.

My thinking is that this ball looks amazing and I am really happy to have it in my collection.  If anyone knows more about antique baseballs and would like to shed some light on this, please feel free to do so.  I'm curious as to the origins of this beauty and would like to know more.

Ebay Mystery

I picked this ball up off of Ebay the other day because I thought it was an antique baseball. Boy was I wrong. This thing is bigger than a softball. My question, I guess, is what kind of ball is this, then?I mean, I think it's awesome, but what sport did it come from? Anyone have any ideas? How old is it? I've seen baseballs of similar design that dated to the late 1800s - early 1900s.

Here you can see the difference in sizes between the mystery ball, a softball and a baseball. I'm hoping someone out there can shed some light on this for me. I'm a little disappointed that it wasn't a baseball (the auction picture did not account for scale, so I thought I was getting a baseball...). I still think it looks really cool, though. An addition to the china cabinet, for sure...