Who has the Bobby Thomson HR? It's still up in the air

BY VIC ZIEGEL

New York Daily News July 4, 2005

NEW YORK - (KRT) - Return with us now, one more time, to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when Bobby Thomson's swing on an 0-1 pitch cleared the Polo Grounds' left-field wall and decided the playoff for the 1951 National League pennant. "The Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the . . ." etc.

For more than 50 years we have known everything there is to know about that pitch, that swing, that homer. The only missing piece of the puzzle, a round piece, with stitches, was the ball itself. It didn't go to the Hall of Fame or on a shelf next to the Maltese Falcon. The ball went bye-bye.

Two days after the game, the Thomson home run ball was handed to 11-year-old Bill Moore by his father, Harold.

That same day, another Thomson home run ball was given to Steve Fader, 5, by his uncle, Gus Ratafia.

Both boys were told it was a very precious ball and stop throwing it around, fahgodsakes.

Thirty-nine years later, Jack Bigel walked into a Salvation Army store on Long Island and bought the ball - the very same ball that was, at that very moment, squirreled away in the Moore and Fader homes - for $2.

So who has the ball? Is it Moore, who collected $40,701.32 for the ball at an auction last week?

Or is it Fader, who gave the ball to his son Brian, the accountant, four years ago.

Brian mounted it on a plaque in his bedroom. Wait a minute . . . yep, it's still there.

And what about Bigel, who sent me an E-mail after I wrote a story about Lelands auction house offering a guaranteed $1 million for The Ball.

"I must respectfully disagree with Mr. Moore's claim that he is in possession of the ball," Bigel wrote. "The reason I am doing so is because I actually have it. In fact, I've had it for 15 years . . ."

Frankly, a good case can be made that neither of those three has the actual ball. They do have a ball, and they may even be baseballs that were used in that Oct. 3 playoff game. Ah, but is it the ball Thomson put over the wall? I have no idea, the Daily News has learned.

The ball Moore showed Lelands was in dreadful shape. The signatures of several Giants are impossible to read, except for a kid outfielder named Willie Mays. But Lelands loved the writing on the ball, which read, "1951, Last Game, Pennet (sic) won by N.Y., B Thompson Home Run, last of 9th."

The auction house played "Polo Grounds: CSI" with the ball and decided the ink, the writing and the ball were from 1951. Moore told them the words, the dreadful spelling, were done by somebody who caught the ball, who worked with his father. That somebody - Moore can't come up with a name, which doesn't help his story - didn't have any children. So he gave the ball to Moore's father for his kids to treasure.

Steve Fader is willing to admit the ball in his bedroom may not be the Thomson ball, "but I know it was a ball used in that game. My uncle either caught it or it was given to him."

Fader can provide a name for somebody who may have handed his uncle the ball. His uncles, Gus and Sam, owned a dry cleaning store on Houston St. One of their regular customers was Leo Durocher, the Giants' manager. He often came by with his soiled clothes - Leo was a sharp dresser, but that's another story - and it's Fader's guess that Durocher handed the ball to Uncle Gus.

Bah and humbug, according to Biegel, who made his $2 score in the Bethpage thrift shop. "The clerk . . . told me it was 'some ball that a guy hit in a playoff game in the 1950s," Biegel wrote. When he examined the ball, he spotted the autographs of several 1951 Giants. One of them, and this is Biegel's best piece of evidence, belongs to a utility infielder named Hank Schenz, who joined the Giants six weeks before the playoffs.

Mike Heffner, Lelands' president, got a look at Biegel's ball and didn't start doing backflips. "There's no documentation," Heffner says. The Schenz autograph? "It could have come five weeks before the playoffs."

He says he's seen about 50 balls in the last 20 years, all autographed by '51 Giants, that were said to have come off Thomson's bat. You know, The Ball. Lelands finally went with the Moore ball because the writing - "1951, Last Game," - was as close as they could come to some sort of documentation.

So the Moore ball was put up for auction and Moore made the money. But is that where it ends? My guess is we'll continue to be rounding up the usual suspects.

..because "Heff collects Thomson stuff too." (sorry couldn't resist). The whole time I'm reading this article the great P.T. Barnum's line "There is a sucker born every minute" kept running through my mind.

I think there is room for a lot fraud of these items in our hobby. There is no way to know that these types of items can be authenticated (except the Bonds, Sosa and McGwire balls). A ball is a ball is a ball. I will give you that the stamping has to match the time and situation but that is it. Autograph fakes have been buying old balls for years to make the dates match up with the autographer. Game used hats???? You have to be kidding me. We trust that because it is the right maker, size and number in the bill that it must be good.... Batting gloves???? Just watch a game on tv to see what kind they used and go the storting goods store and pick up a pair. Game used cleats are no different.
If the older collectors dont keep these items in check we will be burning new people entering our hobby.

nice ball - - - - - but over 40 grand for a ball that only *maybe* is the homerun ball - - - - someone has a lot of extra cash to spend. i'm trying to think of how much money i'd need to have in the bank before making that kind of an expenditure. - - - - - kind of reminds me of willy wonka and the chocolate factory where everyone and his mother shows up to claim that he's got the last golden ticket. it seems like everyone has the homerun ball with a different story - pretty good article - thanks for posting it