GAME-WORN JERSEYS BRING THE HEAT TO HERITAGE SPORTS’ SPRING AUCTION, INCLUDING A 104-YEAR-OLD PHOTO-MATCHED EXAMPLE FROM HALL OF FAME PITCHER WALTER JOHNSON
By Robert Wilonsky
Countless offerings among the almost 3,200 available in Heritage’s May 16-18 Spring Sports Catalog Auction could serve as its centerpiece, its highlight – that one thing that belongs in a museum, if not a Hall of Fame. The abundance of photo-matched jerseys alone qualifies the auction as historic. Like, say, the road New York Yankees jersey worn by Mickey Mantle during his final season in 1968, then signed and inscribed to a Yanks batboy. Or the photo-matched road Brooklyn Dodgers jersey Sandy Koufax wore during his rookie season in 1955 when he was not yet known as The Left Hand of God.
1920 Walter Johnson game-worn Washington Senators jersey photo-matched to first game facing Babe Ruth as a New York Yankee
But it’s a relatively plain flannel jersey – gray, pinstriped, a small “W” stitched into each short sleeve – that draws the eye first. Collectors have always known who wore it: Walter Johnson, who spent all of his 21 seasons in the sun as the right-handed hurler for the Washington Senators. Johnson’s name is stitched into the collar in red cursive, just below the A.G. Spalding & Bros. label. We’ve always known, too, when Johnson wore it: during the 1919-1922 seasons, when the man sportswriter Grantland Rice called “The Big Train” was teammates with another right-handed pitcher, Eric “Swat” Erickson, to whom Johnson gifted the jersey upon Erickson’s retirement from the big leagues following his 1919-1922 stint with Washington.
Only days before the auction opened, Resolution Photomatching determined that the “one-time king of pitchers” – as Johnson was called in 1933’s Who’s Who in Baseball – wore this very jersey on April 29, 1920. That’s when the Nationals downed the New York Yankees 2-1 in front of 5,000 at the hallowed Polo Grounds.
Johnson recorded eight strikeouts that spring afternoon in New York, two coming against a newly minted Yankee right fielder named Babe Ruth, who recorded just a single hit (and RBI) against Johnson. The Big Train, who batted last in the Nats’ lineup, also got a hit that afternoon – a triple. In his 1920 book The Home-Run King, Ruth wrote that Johnson was “the best of them all.”
Johnson’s name is embroidered in the interior collar, just below the Spalding label.
Last month, Resolution photo-matched the jersey to a photo distributed by news agency Underwood & Underwood, whose caption heralds Johnson as “the unsurpassable speed twirler of the Nationals.” The photo also notes that Johnson’s “remarkable speed ball aroused all balldom several years ago” and that he pitched against the Yankees that April afternoon “with the same ‘pep’ that characterized his name.”
Two known Johnson jerseys have survived his storied career, during which The Big Train recorded 3,509 strikeouts (putting him at ninth on the all-time list), 417 wins (the most all-time behind only Cy Young’s 511 victories) and 110 shutout wins (still the record). One, from 1927, is on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. The other is in this auction.
“We have had the opportunity at Heritage Auctions to offer some incredible and museum-worthy jerseys over the decades,” says Chris Ivy, Director of Sports Auctions at Heritage. “But this Walter Johnson example, photo-matched to his first duel with the great Babe Ruth in Yankees pinstripes, certainly qualifies it as a cream-of-the-crop rarity.”
The Koufax and Mantle jerseys are no less significant, as they serve as sort of spiritual bookends to two mythical Hall of Famers who were each a king of New York – at least until the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles after Koufax’s three seasons playing for his hometown team.
The Dodgers jersey – worn by the native son of Borough Park, Brooklyn, when he was a 20-year-old rookie who made his debut in the fifth inning of a game against Milwaukee – has been photo-matched to two spring training games in 1956, when it was common for ballplayers to reuse the previous season’s uniforms. It has Koufax’s name embroidered into its tail, inside which Rawlings sewed washing and drying instructions – right next to the tag that reads “Set I 1955.” It hails from the collection of James Harwell, a Louisiana hurler who played minor-league ball for the Dodgers in the 1950s.
The road gray Yankees jersey, on the other hand, comes from the very end of a fabled career, as evidenced by the “New York” and the No. “7” on the outside and the “Wilson 1968 Set 2” inside. This button-down top was among the last jerseys Mantle wore before hanging up his spikes at the end of the season during which he hit .237 with 18 home runs and 54 RBI – and played in one last All-Star Game before retiring to his Dallas home. In time, this jersey made its way into the hands of Bill Hongach, who served as a batboy for the Yankees in 1972 and ’73, as evidenced by the bold blue inscription Sharpied into the cloth: “To Bill, Best wishes, Mickey Mantle.”
For a look at even more historic jerseys offered in Heritage’s May 16-18 Spring Sports Catalog Auction, check out the slideshow below:
View Slide Show. 11 Photos.
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ROBERT WILONSKY is a staff writer at Intelligent Collector.