Elysian Fields Quarterly - The Baseball Review

In the upstairs office of my home where I often work on issues of this journal rests a baseball bat, nestled against the corner bookshelf that houses my fledgling baseball library. It’s not just any bat, mind you, but the real deal—a genuine Frank Howard, game-used Louisville Slugger model.

As many baseball fans are aware, at one time the 6’ 7", 275-pound (during his heyday) Howard was the most feared slugger in the game. His bat produced rockets that left the park in a heartbeat, and many a hurler dreaded having to face the Senator slugger from a mere sixty feet away. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he used a rather long stick (thirty-six inches in length, to be exact). And while the bat doesn’t seem heavy, it’s hard to imagine how anybody without the exceptional strength of a man like Howard could have powered this bat with enough speed to get around on, say, a Sam McDowell fastball, the way Howard did.

It never occurred to me while growing up a Senators fan in the 1960s that I might someday be lucky enough to own one of my hero’s bats. Frankly, the memories of watching him play, a cherished scorecard, and an autographed yearbook are more than enough keepsakes. But a slugger’s bat is something special. In fact, to hold in your hands a bat that might have launched one of Hondo’s gargantuan blasts at RFK Stadium or other environs is downright magical. Some nights, when my thoughts are in gridlock, I’ll rise from my desk and reach for the bat, and as soon as I take a few awkward cuts with Howard’s "club," I’m instantly transported back to my youth. For just a moment, I’m sitting again in the left field stands of RFK, watching Hondo nervously pace the outfield below, Del Unser make a sensational catch in center, Ken McMullen charge a bunt and make a perfect throw to first. As the memories rush through me, my mind relaxes, I feel energized, and I’m able to concentrate once more on writing.

Now, if someday I had to sell my Howard bat, or somehow it got lost in a move, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. It’s still just a bat, after all. But if someone came to me with a very handsome financial proposition to slice it up into little pieces so that lots of Senators fans could own a sliver, I’d probably brain the guy with the thing (it’s already got a major crack in the handle, anyway). Not only isn’t the bat for sale, I’d donate it to a museum (preferably one that would allow visitors to hold the bat) before I’d let somebody chop it up into meaningless souvenirs.

Unfortunately, the folks at the Upper Deck Card Company don’t share my sentiments. Last year, they purchased a Babe Ruth bat at auction for $23,000 and then proceeded to slice up the heirloom (used by Ruth sometime during the period 1923–31) into approximately 550 tiny pieces that could be affixed to limited edition collector’s cards that were randomly inserted into packs of various 1999 Upper Deck card product lines released in late 1998. According to Upper Deck hobby media manager Terry Melia, the promotion was a way "to spread the wealth among many collectors." When confronted by outraged members of the media and some big-name collectors about the desecration of a Babe Ruth bat, Upper Deck and Melia’s response was that there were still probably 50–100 Ruth bats in existence, so what’s the big deal?

Well, here’s one thought: Which Ruth bat did Upper Deck carve up? We know it wasn’t Ruth’s sixtieth homer bat (that’s in the Hall of Fame), and perhaps a few other famous Ruth bats are accounted for as well. But what about this one? Did Ruth belt his first homer in Yankee Stadium with it? Was it used to crack his 200th, 300th, 400th, 500th, or 600th home run? Did Ruth use it to hit one of his twelve World Series blasts between 1923 and 1928? It’s obvious that Upper Deck gave these questions little consideration before, and clearly they can’t investigate now. But they’re not in the business of preserving history, anyway. If so, they would have given the whole Ruth bat away to one collector in a promotional contest similar to what Wal-Mart did a few years ago with a scarce Honus Wagner tobacco card. But, as Melia put it, a contest with only one winner doesn’t "move enough product." You’ve got to chop up a famous relic into hundreds of pieces to do that. It’s called marketing.

And from a financial standpoint, Upper Deck’s "Pieces of History" promotion has been a tremendous success. Individual Ruth cards book for as much as $2,500 each in some price guides, which means that a $23,000 bat has been transformed into over $1 million worth of memorabilia. Talk about creating value! With this kind of "growth potential" (and you thought the real money was in Internet stocks), why stop with Ruth? Why indeed. Upper Deck has extended this unique method of "product innovation" to bats of all of the members of baseball’s illustrious "500 Home Run Club," and "game-used bat" cards of Mickey Mantle, Frank Robinson, and Eddie Murray were released in the spring. Of course, it’s not the money that Upper Deck is after. Again, they’re just chopping up history so they can "spread the wealth." As Richard McWilliam, chairman and CEO, was quoted on their Web site (www.upperdeck.com): "We are proud to commemorate Major League Baseball homerun kings in a way that gives the common fan and collector a chance to own a piece of history." (It’s worth noting that none of these promotional schemes would be possible without the approval of both Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association, but that’s a story for another issue.)

Which begs the ultimate question: What exactly would you own if you were one of the fortunate few (odds are one in 15,000) to pull one of these Babe Ruth (or Mickey Mantle) inserts from a pack of Upper Deck baseball cards? There’s certainly nothing magical about the card itself, since the minuscule slice of wood imbedded in the card is indistinguishable from any other kind of wood grain, let alone featuring any markings that would connect it with a bat. You couldn’t show it to friends or baseball fanatics with any pride, since they’d just stare back at you blankly and say, "They cut up a Babe Ruth bat?" You wouldn’t experience the small pleasure I get from swinging my Howard bat. In short, all you would have is bragging rights. You’d own a commodity, a "fungible" good as they say. But you wouldn’t have anything remotely connected with the essence of the game.

And therein lies the problem. So many people who want a true "piece" of the game are completely disconnected from its essence. Instead of appreciating the special, timeless pleasures that come from leisurely moments spent at the ballpark communing with friends, they want in on the action, inside the locker room—they want to be "the show." And if they can’t have that magical connection with the game, well by god, they’re simply going to buy up the pieces that make up the whole. Better to have physical possession of a commodity than nothing, right?

Perhaps that’s why everything from players’ uniforms, caps, bats, socks, jocks, and championship rings to trophies, stadium seats, turnstiles, banners, outfield signs, and popcorn containers have sold for record amounts on the auction block. (Someone once even paid a tidy sum for a piece of stale cake from the wedding of Joe DiMaggio and Dorothy Arnold.) The pecuniary excesses that have characterized society at large during the 1980s and 1990s have also found their way to baseball. Why bother with a program from the 1955 World Series when, for the right amount of money, you might be able to own the home plate from Ebbets Field? Who cares about a Mickey Mantle autograph or magazine cover when you can buy his driver’s license and credit cards? Ever wonder what Negro Leaguers must have experienced barnstorming across the country in the 1930s? Hell, maybe you can track down Satchel Paige’s roadster rusting in a junkyard somewhere, restore it for $100,000, and retrace the Pittsburgh Crawfords travels, pretending that you’re sharing their plight.

Only in a frenzied milieu such as this could a priceless Babe Ruth bat be worth more in pieces than as a whole. It’s a mentality reminiscent of the corporate raiders of 1980s fame who "created" enormous wealth by destroying venerable companies that had been long-time employers in many communities. It’s also the same mentality that characterizes the scavengers who can’t wait to own a part of Tiger Stadium or Fenway or even Wrigley once all the grand old ballparks are history. They’ll gladly snap up souvenirs like stadium seats, signs, and bricks rather than work (like the members of the Tiger Stadium Fan Club did) to preserve a real place where fans could actually watch games and have real experiences with other folks. Why save a temple for baseball fans that is part of our mythical past when one’s intent is merely to add relics to a personal shrine in one’s basement? Aren’t the brand-new "retro" parks better anyway?

The bottom line, however, is that you can buy all the bats, all the jerseys, all the seats, all the trophies, and you would still just own pieces. Todd McFarlane may have paid $3.05 million for Mark McGwire’s seventieth home run ball, but all he got was a baseball; Big Mac’s record moment belongs to us all. Rupert Murdoch shelled out $400 million for the Dodgers, but he just acquired real estate and bodies; he’ll never possess the priceless legacy of Dodger fans in Brooklyn and elsewhere. My magical Frank Howard bat would be just another piece of lumber in the hands of some bat collector from Chicago.

The beauty of baseball is that it is as much a game played in the mind as on the field. Ownership comes not from buying priceless souvenirs or extraordinary jock-sniffing; rather, it results from embracing the game—playing, watching, and experiencing. Only with that kind of "investment" does an artifact form a meaningful link with our heroes.

—EFQ

TOM GOLDSTEIN is publisher of Elysian Fields Quarterly.

This column first appeared in EFQ 16:3, Summer 1999