The Babe wasn’t above a little experimentation. A new discovery has added a little more lore to the legend.
It was found at a garage sale.
Of course it was.
Don’t most pieces of rare baseball memorabilia come out of America’s closets, attics and garages?
Two bucks. For a Babe Ruth professional model bat.
The older lady who was just trying to get rid of some personal property about 20 years ago was glad to get anything for that old piece of wood, a sort of weird- looking bat with the cork handle that had been sitting around for decades.
She sold it to a local man who stumbled across the sale and liked it. He, in turn, later sold it to a fellow baseball-loving acquaintance who wanted to learn more once he saw the worn, but legible George ‘Babe’ Ruth branded signature on the barrel. There were 13 small nail holes nearby and it was obvious the heavy stick had seen plenty of use. The bat’s history had gotten lost along the way, but considering the travels of the Babe it’s possible he’d carried it with him on a barnstorming trip to the Northwest and given it away. The new owner’s research eventually led him to Memorabilia Evaluation and Research Services (MEARS) in Milwaukee. Now, the garage sale find is the headline item in that company’s February online sports memorabilia auction.
"After evaluating and grading bats for over five years, this is only the second Babe Ruth 40K Louisville Slugger Professional Model bat we’ve examined," said Troy Kinunen of MEARS.
Research by one of Kinunen’s partners, Dave Grob, indicated that the Kork Grip design was invented by a guy who knew a little something about bats. According to a December 1913 mention in The Sporting Life, Ty Cobb invented the style of bat, perhaps to lessen the sting felt when he made contact. The design caught on with some of the day’s top players. MEARS has examined Kork Grip bats used by Cobb, Joe Jackson, Frankie Frisch, George Sisler, Ed Roush, Mickey Cochrane and eleven others.
"There are still some recorded instances of players ordering them in the early 1930s, but by most accounts, the practice had all but stopped," Kinunen said. "If I had to guess, the main reason would be the introduction of the powerized process around 1930. When the powerized process was incorporated into the design of the bat, it became the new rave, and the kork grip was lost to time."
Ruth may have ordered his bats based on the specifications presented to H&B by Brooklyn Dodger player Tom Griffith.Kinunen says the actual H&B record shows: 1923: ‘Tom Griffith, 8/9/21, with kork grip’. The notation means that for the 1923 season, Ruth specifically requested a Kork Grip bat to be made from a Griffith model. MEARS research revealed that on March 9, 1922, Ruth’s Yankees played an exhibition game against the Dodgers in Beaumont, TX. Griffith went three-for-four that day with two doubles and a triple.
MEARS says the bat is consistent with Ruth’s production ordering patterns for the 1923-26 era with respects to model, weight, signature version, and the use of professional grade wood. Although there is no specific reference of this bat in Babe Ruth’s 1923-26 records, weight, model, and signature version are consistent with the surviving records of Ruth bats from the same period.
"This bat definitely constitutes a find," Kinunen stated. "It may be the missing link to the 1923 H&B factory record. We do know that Babe Ruth ordered cork-gripped bats since it is documented in the H&B factory records. The question arises because the specific order does not include the actual length{mosimage} and weight. What we do know is that due to the early version of this centerbrand marking of 40-K, this bat’s centerbrand is consistent to the 1923 entry in the factory records."
Those records include a number of other 40K bats were ordered and photographs exist of players using the Kork Grip model, leaving little doubt they were not just a curiosity, but utilized during the big leagues for at least a decade. Store model bats were produced with cork grips, but included inch marks on the knob. The Ruth bat didn’t show any inch marks.
The auction for the Ruth Kork Grip bat and the rest of the items in MEARS’ auction, closes February 26. The listing and evaluation can be found here.
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