Reds history goes on auction block



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Reds history on auction block

Wednesday, November 18, 1998

BY JOHN ERARDI
The Cincinnati Enquirer

1918 ball signed by manager Christy Mathewson and CF Edd Roush. Minimum bid: $5,000.

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One of the finest collections of Reds memorabilia in the country is for sale.

The collection, compiled piece-by-piece by Steve Cummings, a diehard Reds fan who grew up in Boston, will be auctioned Friday in Chicago.

Mr. Cummings, 54, first became enamored of Ted Kluszewski's slugging Redlegs of the 1950s.

"He has one of the better Reds collections anywhere," said Cincinnati collector Steve Wolter, of Sports Investments Inc. in Montgomery.

Red Stockings cigar cutter. Minimum bid: $2,500.

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Among the items: a one-of-a-kind "Red Stocking" cigar cutter featuring an authentically clad batter from 1869 - the year baseball's oldest professional team toured the U.S. coast-to-coast and inspired the formation of a professional league.

Mr. Wolter called it Mr. Cummings' "best single thing." He estimates it will bring $10,000-$15,000.

"It's the only known one," he said.

Mr. Cummings estimates his entire collection - which features items from 1869 through 1997 - is worth upwards of $300,000. But the collection cannot be acquired in total. The items must be bid on individually.

The Reds, who are scheduled to open a new ballpark and museum on the riverfront in 2003, would love to have some of the items, but, Mr. Wolter says, "Ballclubs never get involved in bidding at auctions. It's just not something any of them do."

This would not preclude, however, a private benefactor coming forward, buying some of the items and donating them to the Reds to give a huge kick-start to the museum project.

1939 Ival Goodman jacket. Popular OF hit .323. in '39. Minimum bid: $500.

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Reds managing executive John Allen declined to comment on the auction. He said the franchise has quite a bit of memorabilia from the Big Red Machine era - and access to other items through players from those 1970s teams - but hardly anything of an earlier vintage. Mr. Allen said the club likely would begin to collect items for the museum after the design phase of the ballpark and museum is completed, probably in late 1999.

But Randy Smith, director of planning and design for Cincinnati-based Jack Rouse Associates, said, "Once you let the really good things go (at auction), it's awfully hard to get them back."

Among the memorabilia in the Cummings collection:

1880s and 1890s: ornate scorecard covers and tickets.
1902: a sterling silver season pass to Cincinnati's "Palace of the Fans," regarded by many experts as the most architecturally splendid ballpark ever built.

1940 World Series ring. One-quarter carat diamond. Minimum bid: $2,000.

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1918: a baseball signed by Reds manager Christy Mathewson and fellow future fellow Hall of Famer Edd Roush, and Hal Chase, whom Mathewson would later suspend for suspicion of throwing games.
1919: a stocking-shaped Reds dinner program from an end-of-the-season dinner at the Gibson Hotel, featuring such items as Crabcakes Moran (in honor of manager Pat Moran).
1920s through 1970s: game-worn uniforms and bat collections from the World Championship teams.
1940s: a Crosley Field usher's uniform and hat.

Some other items: Red Stockings sheet music, schedules, historic team documents, owner August Herr- mann's cigar band, 1912 Redland Field dedication program, Redland Field celluloid advertising mirror, Edd Roush cigar box, 1919 postcard set, "Moran Day" silk tribute, array of 1919 player payroll checks, 1919 team panorama, 1919 World Series press passes and pins and photographs, 1920s-era mechanical baseball games and a 1956 home-run-record ring.

Steve Cummings holds a 1913 yearbook in the baseball room of his Seattle home.
(Jeff Froschauer photo)
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Mr. Cummings' love for the Reds began as a 12-year-old in Boston, which by 1953 was an exclusively American League town, the Boston Braves of the National League having left for Milwaukee.

"As a boy, I'd get some of the postseason magazines put out by publishers like Dell Sports, and they'd show pictures of the National League and I thought it was so exotic," Mr. Cummings said.

"One night in Boston, I pulled in WCKY from Cincinnati, and the Reds were playing the Cardinals in St. Louis. There was a lot of static, but Kluszewski was up to bat. I knew about his big arms and cutoff sleeves and his big season in '54. To me, there was a great mystique to Klu, Wally Post and all those sluggers.

"And there was something about the name, 'Cincinnati,' the way it rolled off the tongue."

Crosley Field end-row seat with logo on arm rest. Minimum bid: $500.

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Mr. Cummings' love affair with the Reds continued through his adult life as a college student, professor and psychologist in Yellow Springs, Ohio, the San Francisco area and Alaska.

He is parting with the collection to concentrate on another of his avocations: book-collecting.

"If the Reds want to have a (top-quality) museum as part of their new ballpark, they're going to need to get started," Mr. Wolter said. "The really good things that go back to the late 1800s are in the hands of collectors."

Mr. Smith's Jack Rouse Associates has done museums for the Atlanta Braves at Turner Field and the Kentucky Wildcats at Rupp Arena. Cincinnati has a unique and natural attraction, he said, as the "home of professional baseball."

1920 home jersey. Game-used. Has all the original buttons. Minimum bid: $500.

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"As designers, one thing we need to always be aware of is the public's perception of what they're expecting (a museum) to have, and to make sure we don't let them down," Mr. Smith said.

"If an (attraction) is the 'home of professional baseball,' it better have some of those items (of the quality in the Cummings collection)."

And it should have enough of them that there is a certain "weight" to the displayed collection such that it gives the entire project a legitimacy the public is expecting, he said.

Mr. Allen agrees that the museum - with a multitude of interactive play stations and rotating displays - should be the best in any city with a major-league ballclub and that it should draw people year-round. "It should be the creme de la creme because of all the (Reds) history," Mr. Allen said.

WANT TO BID?
Brian Marren, business manager for Mastro's auction house, said it is already too late for the general public to register for the auction, because there wouldn't be time for Mastro's to check references. But if there is a person of considerable means interested in bidding, he or she will be cleared, Mr. Marren said. (Mastro's phone: (630) 472-9551.)

The home of professional baseball is a concept that goes beyond the four walls of a museum, Mr. Smith said. "It goes to being able to walk out on that diamond and to find a way for people to experience what it was like to be (a Red Stockings) player in 1869."

This could be accomplished through technology, he said. But for the museum to have significance, it must have some of the items associated with the team's eras of greatness.

For the Reds, that would be 1869-70, 1919 (world championship and Black Sox scandal), 1939-40 (NL pennant and world championship), 1961 (NL pennant) and the glory years of the Big Red Machine.

The Cummings collection has items from every era.

(Item photos from the Maestro Fine Sports Auctions Catalogue)

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