Eric
02-16-2006, 11:40 PM
February 16, 2006
When Old Stadiums Go, Everything Must Go!
By MATTHEW SUMMERS-SPARKS
ST. LOUIS
JUST as Mike and Jessica Barbieri began remodeling the basement in their ranch house in Sunset Hills, Mo., in November, Ms. Barbieri came across an item she deemed essential for the job: a 21-foot section of the padded outfield wall from Busch Stadium, then in the process of being demolished. Emblazoned with the words "National League Champions" and covered with scratches from outfielders' cleats and dents from batted balls, the wall was being sold by the St. Louis Cardinals in an online auction.
"This wall had to be in our basement," said Ms. Barbieri, whose grandfather was a general manager of a Detroit Tigers minor-league affiliate and whose great-aunts spent decades in local baseball — one as a treasurer of the old St. Louis Browns, the other as a secretary for August A. Busch Jr., a former owner of the Cardinals. "This wall symbolizes our family's baseball history."
The couple won the bidding, paying $2,450, and five weeks later hung it on a custom-built frame attached to their basement wall. At seven feet, it fit snugly under the low ceiling. Now they plan to complement it with wood flooring, baseballs autographed by Cardinals and Yankees, and a dance studio for their daughter, Ashley.
In the last few years, as old stadiums, many of them multipurpose ones like Busch Stadium, have been torn down to make way for a new generation of sport-specific buildings, the teams or municipalities that own them have discovered new sources of revenue in the rubble, and local fans have found a new source for home furnishings.
Although teams have been selling "authentic" merchandise like balls, bats and even old stadium seats for decades, they have seldom before defined memorabilia so broadly, or given fans so many ways to take home a piece of their team's history.
"There's definitely been a large increase in the type and sheer number of items offered for sale," said Mike Heffner, president of Lelands.com (http://lelands.com/), a sports memorabilia auction house in Seaford, N.Y., that conducted one of the Cardinals' online auctions. In particular, he said, "there has been an increase in the amount of multipurpose items, pieces that are both sports collectibles and can be utilized around the home."
As spring training gets under way this week and next, the Cardinals' front office is continuing an aggressive push to sell more than 50,000 pieces of the team's old stadium. There have been two online auctions and one live one, which attracted 17,000 fans, and the team will have a third online auction, at Major League Baseball's Web site, for 10 days beginning Tuesday.
In addition to memorabilia like stadium seats and game-used jerseys, the club has sold television sets, sofas, leather chairs, trucks, golf carts, full-size and smaller bars, dugout and bullpen telephones, players' lockers and Manager Tony La Russa's desk.
A section of the team's dugout bench is in the office of a St. Louis-area children's orthopedist and a urinal hangs in a local urologist's office. The team has raised about $1.5 million toward construction costs for the new Busch Stadium, which is scheduled to be open for an exhibition game on April 4.
There were a few successful sales of this kind before 2000, notably ones from the old Comiskey Park in Chicago and from Arlington Stadium in Arlington, Tex., in the early 1990's. But it is only recently that sports organizations across the country — in Baltimore, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and now St. Louis — have understood that their emotional bonds with their fans are powerful enough to extend to heavily used water fountains and turnstiles.
"I think lots of people would have felt angry if we didn't have this sale," said Ron Watermon, the Cardinals' director of governmental affairs and special projects. "People want this stuff. It's not about stuff being fancy or good-looking. It means something to people."
Robert Cramer of Schaumburg, Ill., a mortgage broker, bought two items in one of the team's online auctions: a 10-foot red-and-white pennant commemorating the team's 1982 World Series title, for $1,676, and the team manager's clubhouse desk, credenza, chair and telephone, for $7,002.
"If I had to select one person whose desk I'd own, I'd say there's Tony La Russa and Donald Trump (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/donald_j_trump/index.html?inline=nyt-per)," he said. "Tony La Russa is the epitome of managers. He makes strategic moves, considers how players are doing. As someone who runs a business, I can relate to his day-to-day decisions."
Mr. Cramer, who estimated that he had been to several hundred games at Busch Stadium, said he and his wife named their son Brock in honor of Lou Brock, a Hall of Fame player for the Cardinals. He set up the desk and accessories at work and put up the pennant at home.
Tom Shelby, another die-hard fan, paid $20,503 for the locker that belonged to Albert Pujols, the Cardinals' slugging first baseman. It now dominates the living room of his family's Victorian house in Webster Groves, Mo. Although it is more than nine feet high, the locker does not seem out of place in a room lined with paintings and photographs of athletes like Wayne Gretzky and Mark McGwire (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/mark_mcgwire/index.html?inline=nyt-per). Clearly, Mr. Shelby, who purchased most of his items at charity events, has had the larger hand in decorating.
"I'm a sports fan, I like sports, but not quite as much as Tom," said his wife, Sheila Shelby. Motioning toward a blouse Lisa Kudrow wore in an episode of "Friends," framed and displayed in the kitchen, Ms. Shelby said, "That's my touch."
Not everyone is persuaded of the value, emotional or financial, of the new anything-counts memorabilia. When Cardinals right fielder Larry Walker, who has since retired, was asked to autograph his locker in October, he found the request ridiculous, Mr. Heffner said.
"So he basically signed his locker, then signed anything he could: the locker-room wall, a trash can, a telephone, the stove," Mr. Heffner said. Everything but the stove and the wall sold in the Cardinals' second online auction, for $11,553.
When Old Stadiums Go, Everything Must Go!
By MATTHEW SUMMERS-SPARKS
ST. LOUIS
JUST as Mike and Jessica Barbieri began remodeling the basement in their ranch house in Sunset Hills, Mo., in November, Ms. Barbieri came across an item she deemed essential for the job: a 21-foot section of the padded outfield wall from Busch Stadium, then in the process of being demolished. Emblazoned with the words "National League Champions" and covered with scratches from outfielders' cleats and dents from batted balls, the wall was being sold by the St. Louis Cardinals in an online auction.
"This wall had to be in our basement," said Ms. Barbieri, whose grandfather was a general manager of a Detroit Tigers minor-league affiliate and whose great-aunts spent decades in local baseball — one as a treasurer of the old St. Louis Browns, the other as a secretary for August A. Busch Jr., a former owner of the Cardinals. "This wall symbolizes our family's baseball history."
The couple won the bidding, paying $2,450, and five weeks later hung it on a custom-built frame attached to their basement wall. At seven feet, it fit snugly under the low ceiling. Now they plan to complement it with wood flooring, baseballs autographed by Cardinals and Yankees, and a dance studio for their daughter, Ashley.
In the last few years, as old stadiums, many of them multipurpose ones like Busch Stadium, have been torn down to make way for a new generation of sport-specific buildings, the teams or municipalities that own them have discovered new sources of revenue in the rubble, and local fans have found a new source for home furnishings.
Although teams have been selling "authentic" merchandise like balls, bats and even old stadium seats for decades, they have seldom before defined memorabilia so broadly, or given fans so many ways to take home a piece of their team's history.
"There's definitely been a large increase in the type and sheer number of items offered for sale," said Mike Heffner, president of Lelands.com (http://lelands.com/), a sports memorabilia auction house in Seaford, N.Y., that conducted one of the Cardinals' online auctions. In particular, he said, "there has been an increase in the amount of multipurpose items, pieces that are both sports collectibles and can be utilized around the home."
As spring training gets under way this week and next, the Cardinals' front office is continuing an aggressive push to sell more than 50,000 pieces of the team's old stadium. There have been two online auctions and one live one, which attracted 17,000 fans, and the team will have a third online auction, at Major League Baseball's Web site, for 10 days beginning Tuesday.
In addition to memorabilia like stadium seats and game-used jerseys, the club has sold television sets, sofas, leather chairs, trucks, golf carts, full-size and smaller bars, dugout and bullpen telephones, players' lockers and Manager Tony La Russa's desk.
A section of the team's dugout bench is in the office of a St. Louis-area children's orthopedist and a urinal hangs in a local urologist's office. The team has raised about $1.5 million toward construction costs for the new Busch Stadium, which is scheduled to be open for an exhibition game on April 4.
There were a few successful sales of this kind before 2000, notably ones from the old Comiskey Park in Chicago and from Arlington Stadium in Arlington, Tex., in the early 1990's. But it is only recently that sports organizations across the country — in Baltimore, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and now St. Louis — have understood that their emotional bonds with their fans are powerful enough to extend to heavily used water fountains and turnstiles.
"I think lots of people would have felt angry if we didn't have this sale," said Ron Watermon, the Cardinals' director of governmental affairs and special projects. "People want this stuff. It's not about stuff being fancy or good-looking. It means something to people."
Robert Cramer of Schaumburg, Ill., a mortgage broker, bought two items in one of the team's online auctions: a 10-foot red-and-white pennant commemorating the team's 1982 World Series title, for $1,676, and the team manager's clubhouse desk, credenza, chair and telephone, for $7,002.
"If I had to select one person whose desk I'd own, I'd say there's Tony La Russa and Donald Trump (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/donald_j_trump/index.html?inline=nyt-per)," he said. "Tony La Russa is the epitome of managers. He makes strategic moves, considers how players are doing. As someone who runs a business, I can relate to his day-to-day decisions."
Mr. Cramer, who estimated that he had been to several hundred games at Busch Stadium, said he and his wife named their son Brock in honor of Lou Brock, a Hall of Fame player for the Cardinals. He set up the desk and accessories at work and put up the pennant at home.
Tom Shelby, another die-hard fan, paid $20,503 for the locker that belonged to Albert Pujols, the Cardinals' slugging first baseman. It now dominates the living room of his family's Victorian house in Webster Groves, Mo. Although it is more than nine feet high, the locker does not seem out of place in a room lined with paintings and photographs of athletes like Wayne Gretzky and Mark McGwire (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/mark_mcgwire/index.html?inline=nyt-per). Clearly, Mr. Shelby, who purchased most of his items at charity events, has had the larger hand in decorating.
"I'm a sports fan, I like sports, but not quite as much as Tom," said his wife, Sheila Shelby. Motioning toward a blouse Lisa Kudrow wore in an episode of "Friends," framed and displayed in the kitchen, Ms. Shelby said, "That's my touch."
Not everyone is persuaded of the value, emotional or financial, of the new anything-counts memorabilia. When Cardinals right fielder Larry Walker, who has since retired, was asked to autograph his locker in October, he found the request ridiculous, Mr. Heffner said.
"So he basically signed his locker, then signed anything he could: the locker-room wall, a trash can, a telephone, the stove," Mr. Heffner said. Everything but the stove and the wall sold in the Cardinals' second online auction, for $11,553.