1919 Cincinnati Reds Championship Baseball
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GUEST:
Well, this is a 1919 World Championship baseball. They were given to me roughly about 38 years ago, I'd say. I must have been about 13 years old. Friend of my mom's give 'em to me before he went back to Texas, and I've had 'em ever since sitting in a little viewing area at the house there, and then they went down to Virginia with me for a while, and then back here to Ohio. And just brought 'em in here to see what we might have to say about 'em.
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm. The 1919 Cincinnati Reds were a great team. An underappreciated team. They won 96 games that year, which was the best in the league, and of course, they went on to play the Chicago White Sox in the World Series. A lot of people favored the White Sox. Shoeless Joe Jackson. The White Sox lost the World Series five games to three. Then it came out that they had perhaps thrown those games. And it was a big cloud over baseball. But what's kind of lost in all that is that the Cincinnati Reds won the World Series that year, and a lot of scholars think they were really one of the best teams of the era. It's just that they've kind of been overshadowed by the Chicago White Sox, of course, known as the Black Sox. So, here we have a baseball signed by 26 members of the team. And we have the manager of the team, Pat Moran, who is right here on the sweet spot. We even have the owner of the team, which is interesting, August Herrmann. We have some of the best players. A gentleman named Edd Roush, who eventually became a Hall of Famer. And then we have a player named Jake Daubert, who was a great player of the era. Kind of a borderline Hall of Fame-type player. He's one of the rarer signatures on a baseball. Championship team-signed baseballs are very, very collectible. The earlier you go, the rarer they get. Now, do you want to take a guess as to how many 1919 Cincinnati Reds baseballs there are out there? Or that are known, I should say.
GUEST:
Uh, maybe 20? I...
APPRAISER:
How about less than five? I would put an auction estimate of between $45,000 and $50,000.
GUEST:
Whew! That's a little more than I thought.
APPRAISER:
Yeah. It's in remarkably good shape, considering. The signatures are dark. They're all there. Everybody you'd want on that team is on that ball. This is by far the best baseball I've ever seen on the ROADSHOW, so... It was really exciting when you pulled it out of your bag there, and I saw what it was.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
It's an amazing ball.
GUEST:
Glad I brought some excitement to you, 'cause you brought some excitement to me.
(both laugh)
GUEST:
My wife almost sold it for $200.
APPRAISER:
Well, I'm glad she didn't.
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