Interesting info that was placed in the game used items for sale folder by juluke

Ray Chapman
April 15 2005 at 5:17 PM
juluke   (Login juluke)


Tim,
in response to your note in "Game Used Items Wanted," I got the pair of Joe Sewell's cleats he was wearing when he replaced the fallen ray chapman in a ron oser auctionin '00(?). i have ban johnson's original file on the ray chapman affair. chapman was the on;y player to be killed during the course of a game--he was hit in the 5th inning by a picth thrown by carl mays of the yankees, and died early the next morning. in the file are two handwritten "eyewitness to the event" letters by the umpire that day, thomas connelly, various letters re: the event from connie mack, etc. The piece de resistance in the 40 document file is the actual petition signed by the entire cleveland team to ban johnson saying they will never, as a team carl mays again. it says "we the undersigned players of the cleveland baseball team....." So, i've always been on the look out for chapman stuff. That's how i 'had to have" sewell's cleats.

i wrote to chapman's 97 year-old sister in west virginia who wrote me a 5-page letter about her brother, who died when she was just a 16 year old girl. the letter is included in my latest book of "baseball letters" called "Something to write home about" (random house, 2003). I contacted the sister of Carl Mays who gave me (for my second "letters" book, an 8-page handwritten letter from her brother Carl describing the incident and how bad he felt about it.

i also picked up a game used chapman bat (one of only 2 known) at a lelands auction in '01.

That's the long and short of how i came by the sewell cleats. i wrote to sewell's son who wrote me a long letter about the cleats. his dad, Joe, had signed them" I used these cleats in 1920". something like that. He came up so late in the season because the indians needed a shortstop.

And yes, that was me on Outside The Lines/espn last night talking about phil linz's harmonica, which i have yet to add to the "collection" pages on my website, seth.com. you can see a bunch of stuff there.Thanks for mentioning it.

all the best,

seth