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Major Discovery Quadruples Value Of Lou Gehrig Game-Used Bat

This article is more than 8 years old.

For the last several months Al Crisafulli combed the web for an image  of Lou Gehrig wielding a Hannah Batrite bat like the kind headlining his auction this summer. In the sports memorabilia industry the term “photo match” refers to the primary technique for authenticating game-used bats, gloves, jerseys, cleats— or just about any piece of game-used equipment.  Crisafulli, the owner of Love of the Game Auctions, had plenty of proof that Gehrig used the Hannah brand, but no matching photo.

As I reported in another post, decades ago a New Jersey family received the bat from a former Yankees employee. For the good part of 40 years, it stood propped against their front door, serving as a simple home security system in case they needed to brain an intruder. At one point the family considered giving the bat to a neighborhood child playing in the street. They even thought about shipping it to Derek Jeter in 2009 when he broke Gehrig’s record for most hits by a Yankee.

After calling the Baseball Hall of Fame, the family was advised to contact a professional authenticator, which led them to John Taube He filled them in on all the details indicating that the Yankees first baseman used Hannah Batrites.  There was Gehrig’s testimony in a court case between rival bat companies, Hillerich & Bradsby and Hannah Manufacturing Co showing he used both brands, and a telegram from Gehrig to Hannah ordering custom-made bats

No sooner had Crisafulli published his auction catalog than he finally found the object of his pursuit, from the long-defunct Chicago Daily News in 1930. In an old Hollywood film he probably would have yelled “Stop the Presses!” but it was too late.

While studying the picture of Gehrig sitting next to Babe Ruth and their manager Bob Shawkey on the side of a batting cage at the old Comiskey in Chicago, Crisafulli noticed markings on Gehrig’s bat. “Gehrig is clearly holding a ‘bat wing’ bat, so much so that it could have been an ad for Hanna Batrite,” Crisafulli explained. He doubled the DPI from 300 to 600 on his 27-inch monitor before reaching out to the photo’s owner, the Chicago History Museum. “What they sent was an astonishing 1200 DPI  scan from the glass plate negative that illustrated the detail on the bat in a way we hadn’t seen before. The grain patterns on the bat appeared to a match for our bat in the auction.”

As a result, Crisafulli didn’t just have a photo of Gehrig with any Hannah Batrite, but the actual bat in his possession. To fuel  interest, he brought it along with a $100,000 worth of baseball cards to a roadshow held at Foley N.Y. Pub & Restaurant across the street from the Empire State Building. “The wood grain is like a finger print because each is unique,” he said, letting me hold the bat and pose with it for his Instagram account. “Look at the witches’ peak; it’s the ‘arch’ where the grain goes up and them comes down again on the bat. It’s shaped like an upside down letter ‘V.’”

As we were talking, Crisafulli’s smartphone pinged. It was John Taube emailing him another photo of the bat, this one with nine different arrows pointing to where the barrel and “centerbrand’s” grain alignment matched perfectly. “This is massive news, David!” Crisafulli exclaimed. “This is now a big-boy piece in a whole other stratosphere!”

The photo prompted Taube to increase the bat’s grade from an 8.5 to a 9. “This is the first and currently only Lou Gehrig professional model bat that has ever been photo matched,” he wrote in an addendum to his Letter of Authenticity that appears on Crisafulli’s auction website. “A photo match with such detail has never before discovered, enabling us to put this very bat in Gehrig's hands in Comiskey Park in 1930.  No Lou Gehrig bat exists with such impeccable provenance.” (Emphasis Crisafulli’s!.)

During the 1930 season, Gehrig reached the peak of his prowess, hitting.379, clubbing 41 home runs, and knocking in 173 runs. His 220 hits were the most in his career. Playing in the shadow of the flamboyant Babe Ruth, the modest Gehrig was a model of dependability and durability. The “Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth” he delivered at Yankee Stadium in 1939 as the disease named after him ravaged his body is baseball’s equivalent of the Gettysburg Address.Gehrig’s gamers are among the scarcest and most coveted in the hobby. Only 20 are known to exist, according to PSA ProBatFacts, and only one for every 20 Ruths. While Gehrigs average about $100,000 each, the record price paid was $403,000 in 2011. Before finding the photo, Crisafulli estimated the bat would fetch $100,000; since his find, he believes it could reach twice that amount, though he says it’s anybody’s guess. Upon the news, it has almost tripled in value, to about $. The auction closes August 8th.

Of the multitude of fans who stopped by to pose with the Gehrig bat, perhaps the happiest was Foley’s affable general manager, Bryan Torres.  “This is very cool,” he said. “Just the idea itself makes me feel like a little kid.”