kingjammy24
05-06-2008, 06:18 PM
What wood Joltin' Joe say about this?
Mystery surrounding sale of DiMaggio's
bat puts memorabilia biz in spotlight again
By BILL MADDEN and MICHAEL O'KEEFFE
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITERS
Joe DiMaggio poses with Tommy Henrich (r.) and Charlie Keller (l.). Henrich claims bat that sold for $345,000 is one Joe D. used during 56-game hitting streak.
When Patricia Henrich discovered a Louisville Slugger with Joe DiMaggio's autograph burned on the barrel in her grandmother's home earlier this year, she figured it might be valuable, so she contacted the most prominent authenticator in the sports memorabilia industry.
Dave Bushing identified the 36-inch white ash stick as a DiMaggio game-used bat from the early '40s. He gave her $30,000 for the bat and planned to sell it quickly.
When potential buyers pressed Bushing for more information, he asked Henrich to call her 91-year-old father in California. That's when Bushing says Tommy Henrich - Joltin' Joe's Yankee teammate and close friend in the 1940s - dropped a bombshell:
Old Reliable told his daughter the grimy Louisville Slugger found in the attic was used by the Yankee Clipper during his 56-game hitting streak, the most enduring record in the history of sports. To Bushing, it was like finding the Holy Grail. "This is as good as it gets," he says.
But in the scandal-stained, shark-infested waters of sports memorabilia, there's no such thing as a sure thing. Bushing sold the bat for $345,000 at an April auction conducted by MastroNet Inc., the nation's largest sports memorabilia company. The sale, top collectors and dealers say, exposed deep and disturbing flaws that make memorabilia a crapshoot for even the most seasoned enthusiasts: MastroNet told bidders that Bushing had given the bat his stamp of approval, but the auction house did not tell them he had every reason to pump it up - Bushing was also the seller.
Telephone and Internet sales add additional murkiness. Collectors don't know who they're bidding against - or if they are simply bidding against themselves. The evidence Bushing interprets as rock-solid, other authenticators told the Daily News, is a lot flabbier when viewed by experts who won't profit handsomely from its sale.
"I thought there was a rush to judgment," says veteran bat authenticator John Taube. "He may have used the bat during the streak. He may not have used it during the streak. You have to weigh both sides of the coin. But you can't say 100%, it's a streak bat."
Bushing and partner Dan Knoll interviewed Henrich at his home in California about the bat, and the old Yankee's story survived the strictest scrutiny, Bushing says. Shipping records obtained from Louisville Slugger manufacturer Hillerich & Bradsby back up Henrich's story. "Everything meshes," says Bushing, who gave the bat an A-10 grade, his highest mark. "Everything is 100% verifiable. This bat was used during the streak."
The buyer was none other than Hillerich & Bradsby, which plans to display the Louisville Slugger in its Kentucky museum. Spokesman Rick Redman says the company did not know Bushing was the seller, but is satisfied it bought a genuine streak bat. MastroNet president Doug Allen, meanwhile, praises Bushing for going the distance to identify a long-lost but important baseball artifact. "From my standpoint, the bat stands on its own," Allen says.
Other industry insiders, however, say H&B took a leap of faith when it purchased the bat. "I don't know anyone who bid on it," says Philadelphia collector Ron Leff. "For that kind of money, there were too many questions."
Bushing says much of the criticism is based on "petty jealousies," and says he'll tell potential buyers about his financial interest in items he authenticates in the future.
But even full disclosure wouldn't have answered all the questions that have popped up around this bat.
Joe DiMaggio started the 1941 season in a funk, hitting .184 over a 20-game stretch in April and May. But on May 15, he broke out of his slump with a single in the first inning of a game with the White Sox. It was the start of his famous 56-game hitting streak, an accomplishment that may never be matched.
According to newspaper accounts, DiMaggio apparently used three bats during the streak. The first was stolen between games of a doubleheader in Washington D.C., right after DiMaggio tied the 41-game modern-day record set by George Sisler in 1922. He broke Sisler's record in the second game of the doubleheader with a bat he had loaned to Henrich earlier in the season. DiMaggio resumed using the first bat when it was returned a few days later, reportedly with the aid of Newark goodfellas.
Henrich's bat - the one used to break Sisler's streak - was donated to the USO, which raffled it off to raise money for U.S. servicemen stationed overseas.
At some point, for some unknown reason, DiMaggio abandoned Bat No. 1 and started using a third Louisville Slugger, part of a shipment of bats he'd ordered on July 1 from Hillerich & Bradsby. Maybe the first one cracked; maybe Joe just wanted to try something new. "Nobody really understands why," says Columbia professor Michael Seidel, the author of Streak: Joe DiMaggio and the Summer of '41. "Nobody knows why he switched."
DiMaggio used Bat No. 3 for a week or so until the streak ended in Cleveland on July 17. He continued to use it that season until it developed a crack. Henrich says DiMaggio then gave him the bat.
"I took it home and had the crack repaired, intending to keep it as a memento of that season, but I got married, moved into my own home and the war broke out and that bat was soon forgotten," Henrich says in a letter posted on the MastroNet Web site. "We really didn't pay much attention to this stuff back then . . . I left this bat at my mother's house after the 1941 season . . . the bat has been there ever since until my daughter got it out this past year."
Bushing received $300,000 from the April auction and he says he'll share the profits with Henrich's family, although he declined to say how much. Patricia Henrich says she's "satisfied" with her arrangement with Bushing. MastroNet, meanwhile, pockets a $45,000 commission.
When it comes to the bat Hillerich & Bradsby bought this spring, everybody agrees on at least one point: It was made by the Louisville Slugger company in the early 1940s for DiMaggio. Bats, however, are notoriously difficult to track. "There is always a wide time frame when the bat was used," says Baseball Hall of Fame curator Ted Spencer. "With any bat, the credibility goes to the source."
For Bushing and Allen, Henrich's account is good as gold - it's overwhelming evidence the bat they sold in April was used by DiMaggio during his 56-game hitting streak. Henrich, Allen says, was known as a solid guy during his playing days.
"For an older gentleman, he has a great recollection of the facts," Allen says. "Based on Tommy Henrich's reputation, we believe this account to be credible."
Some experts, however, question how a man Henrich's age can recall so many details. Henrich seemed confused - or possibly evasive - when contacted by the Daily News.
His daughter says he has trouble articulating his thoughts and asked a reporter not to call her father again. Henrich appears expansive in some portions of a videotaped interview linked to MastroNet's Web site. At others, he seems to be led by the interviewers' questions.
"I don't want to disparage anyone here, but in this case, you have an old man who says he got the bat from Joe," says Spencer.
Players' memories aren't always golden, says Spencer. Al Gionfriddo, a former Brooklyn Dodger who died last year at 81, consigned the glove he used for his jaw-dropping catch of a DiMaggio blast in the 1947 World Series to a MastroNet auction in 2001 without realizing he had already shipped the glove to Cooperstown in 1974. MastroNet, which had told Gionfriddo the glove would fetch as much as $100,000, ended up selling the mitt for $12,000 - to Gionfriddo's wife.
Bushing and Allen contend Henrich's story is supported by old records from Hillerich & Bradsby. The bat has "35-1/2" marked on the knob, indicating its weight in ounces; according to H&B records Bushing shared with the Daily News, DiMaggio specifically asked the factory to mark the weight on the end of the bats he ordered on July 1, 1941. The next two orders that season - July 3 and Aug. 15 - simply say "same as above," but don't specifically ask the factory to mark the weight on the end of the bats. DiMaggio didn't request the factory to mark the weight on the knob again until Sept. 18, when he ordered bats for the World Series, long after the streak ended.
According to Bushing, the bat could only have come from the July 1 shipment during the heart of the streak - if DiMaggio wanted the weight marked on the ends, he would have asked the factory to do it. Others, however, say Bushing is interpreting the records to bolster his cause - couldn't bats ordered as "same as above" also have the weight marked on the knob? "There are probably 30 bats with 35-1/2 on the knob from 1941 and 1942," Leff says.
Ball marks on the bat, meanwhile, indicate the bat may have been used by both a righty as well as a lefty. Bushing says he's reviewed photos that show the righthanded DiMaggio sometimes hit with the label down, which would explain why some marks on the bat look like they came from a southpaw like Henrich. The authenticator Taube says he believes DiMaggio hit with the label up "most of the time if not all of the time."
But at least one other game-used DiMaggio bat Taube has examined also had marks that indicated use by a lefty. "Maybe Henrich used the bat, too," Taube says. "Does that make it any less a DiMaggio bat? You can't say 100% either way."
Questions cropped up about the bat almost as soon as Bushing started to shop it around this spring. How did Henrich, collectors and dealers asked, forget about such a significant piece of baseball history for 60 years? The bat was touted to top collectors as near-perfect, but Taube's partner, Malta, says the first time he examined the bat, he noticed the crack and said he believed it had been professionally repaired, not by Henrich. "There's no explanation as to who did this," he says. "C'mon, what's going on here?"
The controversy was stoked by Robert Plancich, a self-appointed memorabilia industry watchdog who initiated a confrontational e-mail campaign with Bushing, Allen and Hillerich & Bradsby, questioning the story behind the bat. "There's a lot of conflicts of interest in the industry," says Plancich, a Southern California baseball fanatic and the founder of the Collectors Alliance for Reform and Disciplinary Sanctions. "I'm trying to keep the industry honest."
Plancich's rants cost him credibility, industry insiders say, although they say he's asking good questions. When H&B officials were confronted by Plancich, they consulted Rex Bradley, the company's long-time player liaison. Bradley, through H&B spokesman Redman, declined to comment for this story. But according to Redman, Bradley says Joltin' Joe told him he gave a streak bat to Henrich.
"That," MastroNet president Allen says, "is unsolicited corroborating information." "Rex has no reason to lie," Bushing says.
But some of DiMaggio's closest confidantes say the Yankee Clipper's words needed to be taken with a grain of salt. "Joe didn't give anything to anybody," says Morris Engelberg, his long-time attorney.
Bushing says the whole ordeal has got him to thinking about getting out of the authentication business all together. "It's been nothing but a headache," he says. "You wonder if it's worth it."
Originally published on June 5, 2004
Mystery surrounding sale of DiMaggio's
bat puts memorabilia biz in spotlight again
By BILL MADDEN and MICHAEL O'KEEFFE
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITERS
Joe DiMaggio poses with Tommy Henrich (r.) and Charlie Keller (l.). Henrich claims bat that sold for $345,000 is one Joe D. used during 56-game hitting streak.
When Patricia Henrich discovered a Louisville Slugger with Joe DiMaggio's autograph burned on the barrel in her grandmother's home earlier this year, she figured it might be valuable, so she contacted the most prominent authenticator in the sports memorabilia industry.
Dave Bushing identified the 36-inch white ash stick as a DiMaggio game-used bat from the early '40s. He gave her $30,000 for the bat and planned to sell it quickly.
When potential buyers pressed Bushing for more information, he asked Henrich to call her 91-year-old father in California. That's when Bushing says Tommy Henrich - Joltin' Joe's Yankee teammate and close friend in the 1940s - dropped a bombshell:
Old Reliable told his daughter the grimy Louisville Slugger found in the attic was used by the Yankee Clipper during his 56-game hitting streak, the most enduring record in the history of sports. To Bushing, it was like finding the Holy Grail. "This is as good as it gets," he says.
But in the scandal-stained, shark-infested waters of sports memorabilia, there's no such thing as a sure thing. Bushing sold the bat for $345,000 at an April auction conducted by MastroNet Inc., the nation's largest sports memorabilia company. The sale, top collectors and dealers say, exposed deep and disturbing flaws that make memorabilia a crapshoot for even the most seasoned enthusiasts: MastroNet told bidders that Bushing had given the bat his stamp of approval, but the auction house did not tell them he had every reason to pump it up - Bushing was also the seller.
Telephone and Internet sales add additional murkiness. Collectors don't know who they're bidding against - or if they are simply bidding against themselves. The evidence Bushing interprets as rock-solid, other authenticators told the Daily News, is a lot flabbier when viewed by experts who won't profit handsomely from its sale.
"I thought there was a rush to judgment," says veteran bat authenticator John Taube. "He may have used the bat during the streak. He may not have used it during the streak. You have to weigh both sides of the coin. But you can't say 100%, it's a streak bat."
Bushing and partner Dan Knoll interviewed Henrich at his home in California about the bat, and the old Yankee's story survived the strictest scrutiny, Bushing says. Shipping records obtained from Louisville Slugger manufacturer Hillerich & Bradsby back up Henrich's story. "Everything meshes," says Bushing, who gave the bat an A-10 grade, his highest mark. "Everything is 100% verifiable. This bat was used during the streak."
The buyer was none other than Hillerich & Bradsby, which plans to display the Louisville Slugger in its Kentucky museum. Spokesman Rick Redman says the company did not know Bushing was the seller, but is satisfied it bought a genuine streak bat. MastroNet president Doug Allen, meanwhile, praises Bushing for going the distance to identify a long-lost but important baseball artifact. "From my standpoint, the bat stands on its own," Allen says.
Other industry insiders, however, say H&B took a leap of faith when it purchased the bat. "I don't know anyone who bid on it," says Philadelphia collector Ron Leff. "For that kind of money, there were too many questions."
Bushing says much of the criticism is based on "petty jealousies," and says he'll tell potential buyers about his financial interest in items he authenticates in the future.
But even full disclosure wouldn't have answered all the questions that have popped up around this bat.
Joe DiMaggio started the 1941 season in a funk, hitting .184 over a 20-game stretch in April and May. But on May 15, he broke out of his slump with a single in the first inning of a game with the White Sox. It was the start of his famous 56-game hitting streak, an accomplishment that may never be matched.
According to newspaper accounts, DiMaggio apparently used three bats during the streak. The first was stolen between games of a doubleheader in Washington D.C., right after DiMaggio tied the 41-game modern-day record set by George Sisler in 1922. He broke Sisler's record in the second game of the doubleheader with a bat he had loaned to Henrich earlier in the season. DiMaggio resumed using the first bat when it was returned a few days later, reportedly with the aid of Newark goodfellas.
Henrich's bat - the one used to break Sisler's streak - was donated to the USO, which raffled it off to raise money for U.S. servicemen stationed overseas.
At some point, for some unknown reason, DiMaggio abandoned Bat No. 1 and started using a third Louisville Slugger, part of a shipment of bats he'd ordered on July 1 from Hillerich & Bradsby. Maybe the first one cracked; maybe Joe just wanted to try something new. "Nobody really understands why," says Columbia professor Michael Seidel, the author of Streak: Joe DiMaggio and the Summer of '41. "Nobody knows why he switched."
DiMaggio used Bat No. 3 for a week or so until the streak ended in Cleveland on July 17. He continued to use it that season until it developed a crack. Henrich says DiMaggio then gave him the bat.
"I took it home and had the crack repaired, intending to keep it as a memento of that season, but I got married, moved into my own home and the war broke out and that bat was soon forgotten," Henrich says in a letter posted on the MastroNet Web site. "We really didn't pay much attention to this stuff back then . . . I left this bat at my mother's house after the 1941 season . . . the bat has been there ever since until my daughter got it out this past year."
Bushing received $300,000 from the April auction and he says he'll share the profits with Henrich's family, although he declined to say how much. Patricia Henrich says she's "satisfied" with her arrangement with Bushing. MastroNet, meanwhile, pockets a $45,000 commission.
When it comes to the bat Hillerich & Bradsby bought this spring, everybody agrees on at least one point: It was made by the Louisville Slugger company in the early 1940s for DiMaggio. Bats, however, are notoriously difficult to track. "There is always a wide time frame when the bat was used," says Baseball Hall of Fame curator Ted Spencer. "With any bat, the credibility goes to the source."
For Bushing and Allen, Henrich's account is good as gold - it's overwhelming evidence the bat they sold in April was used by DiMaggio during his 56-game hitting streak. Henrich, Allen says, was known as a solid guy during his playing days.
"For an older gentleman, he has a great recollection of the facts," Allen says. "Based on Tommy Henrich's reputation, we believe this account to be credible."
Some experts, however, question how a man Henrich's age can recall so many details. Henrich seemed confused - or possibly evasive - when contacted by the Daily News.
His daughter says he has trouble articulating his thoughts and asked a reporter not to call her father again. Henrich appears expansive in some portions of a videotaped interview linked to MastroNet's Web site. At others, he seems to be led by the interviewers' questions.
"I don't want to disparage anyone here, but in this case, you have an old man who says he got the bat from Joe," says Spencer.
Players' memories aren't always golden, says Spencer. Al Gionfriddo, a former Brooklyn Dodger who died last year at 81, consigned the glove he used for his jaw-dropping catch of a DiMaggio blast in the 1947 World Series to a MastroNet auction in 2001 without realizing he had already shipped the glove to Cooperstown in 1974. MastroNet, which had told Gionfriddo the glove would fetch as much as $100,000, ended up selling the mitt for $12,000 - to Gionfriddo's wife.
Bushing and Allen contend Henrich's story is supported by old records from Hillerich & Bradsby. The bat has "35-1/2" marked on the knob, indicating its weight in ounces; according to H&B records Bushing shared with the Daily News, DiMaggio specifically asked the factory to mark the weight on the end of the bats he ordered on July 1, 1941. The next two orders that season - July 3 and Aug. 15 - simply say "same as above," but don't specifically ask the factory to mark the weight on the end of the bats. DiMaggio didn't request the factory to mark the weight on the knob again until Sept. 18, when he ordered bats for the World Series, long after the streak ended.
According to Bushing, the bat could only have come from the July 1 shipment during the heart of the streak - if DiMaggio wanted the weight marked on the ends, he would have asked the factory to do it. Others, however, say Bushing is interpreting the records to bolster his cause - couldn't bats ordered as "same as above" also have the weight marked on the knob? "There are probably 30 bats with 35-1/2 on the knob from 1941 and 1942," Leff says.
Ball marks on the bat, meanwhile, indicate the bat may have been used by both a righty as well as a lefty. Bushing says he's reviewed photos that show the righthanded DiMaggio sometimes hit with the label down, which would explain why some marks on the bat look like they came from a southpaw like Henrich. The authenticator Taube says he believes DiMaggio hit with the label up "most of the time if not all of the time."
But at least one other game-used DiMaggio bat Taube has examined also had marks that indicated use by a lefty. "Maybe Henrich used the bat, too," Taube says. "Does that make it any less a DiMaggio bat? You can't say 100% either way."
Questions cropped up about the bat almost as soon as Bushing started to shop it around this spring. How did Henrich, collectors and dealers asked, forget about such a significant piece of baseball history for 60 years? The bat was touted to top collectors as near-perfect, but Taube's partner, Malta, says the first time he examined the bat, he noticed the crack and said he believed it had been professionally repaired, not by Henrich. "There's no explanation as to who did this," he says. "C'mon, what's going on here?"
The controversy was stoked by Robert Plancich, a self-appointed memorabilia industry watchdog who initiated a confrontational e-mail campaign with Bushing, Allen and Hillerich & Bradsby, questioning the story behind the bat. "There's a lot of conflicts of interest in the industry," says Plancich, a Southern California baseball fanatic and the founder of the Collectors Alliance for Reform and Disciplinary Sanctions. "I'm trying to keep the industry honest."
Plancich's rants cost him credibility, industry insiders say, although they say he's asking good questions. When H&B officials were confronted by Plancich, they consulted Rex Bradley, the company's long-time player liaison. Bradley, through H&B spokesman Redman, declined to comment for this story. But according to Redman, Bradley says Joltin' Joe told him he gave a streak bat to Henrich.
"That," MastroNet president Allen says, "is unsolicited corroborating information." "Rex has no reason to lie," Bushing says.
But some of DiMaggio's closest confidantes say the Yankee Clipper's words needed to be taken with a grain of salt. "Joe didn't give anything to anybody," says Morris Engelberg, his long-time attorney.
Bushing says the whole ordeal has got him to thinking about getting out of the authentication business all together. "It's been nothing but a headache," he says. "You wonder if it's worth it."
Originally published on June 5, 2004