Home
Statues
Jackie Robinson
Babe Ruth
The Story
Ephemera
Paintings
Contact Us
Finally, he was done and we could get him out to shows and
galleries. The first stop was a traditional woodcarving show where he took
a Best in Show ribbon. That was one of the happiest days of my life.
I really had no idea where he stood as a piece of art or sculpture and people
were treating me, at that show, like I was Lindberg. It was so much bigger
and different than anything else there that I suppose it caused a lot of fuss.
Also, those shows tend to feature the same artists year after year and everyone
knows everyone and then some young guy shows up with this life sized statue and
that will get some attention. But at the time, I really needed the shot in
the arm, self-esteem wise and in other ways too. It was one of those
handful of days in your life that you'd like to bottle.
After that show, I planned to get him out to baseball card and
memorabilia shows to see what the folks who did that had to say. There was
a lot of interest and we met a lot of characters. This man showed up to
one show dressed like this and he was a tremendously nice fellow. He was
the original Mr. Met out at Shea Stadium after the Mets moved out of the Polo
Grounds. He was all fired up that the Mets, who had gotten away from the
"Mr. Met" promotion, had recently reinstated the character, only they hired a
new guy and commissioned a new head. They didn't want to hear about the
original Mr. Met. Well, Mr. Met's feelings were bent a little out of shape
and I felt bad for the guy. I also had a hard time keeping a straight face
talking to a grown man while looking thorough the mouth at his face inside.
And all the while his voice is echoing inside this huge, paper mache ball and
you kind of have to strain to listen and take him seriously because he was
really broken up about the Mets blowing him off and hiring a young turk to be
Mr. Met.
Among the shows we did was a nice one at Nabisco headquarters in
New Jersey. It was a sports art exhibition and a class affair. The
statue was a big hit, as always.
The exhibit at Hofstra was unique. It was for his 100th
anniversary and most of it was papers and letters and photos. There were
some rings and trophies and what not, but the big statue just topped it off
perfectly. The folks at Hofstra were very appreciative of the Babe.
Sadly almost, we crated him up one last time and took him to
Hoboken, NJ to be sold at auction. Since I had always been fascinated by
the auction business, I offered to work the phones at crunch time, as it was a
purely phone and fax auction. I worked the last five days and it was a lot
of fun and a great learning experience. I discovered that many of the
auction houses that you figure are fierce competitors, actually lend out help
for the crunch, so you met a lot of people from the various houses. I was
amazed at what a small world the sports memorabilia business is. One time
a caller was trying to bid an item and someone remembered a bid in an earlier
auction that they had reneged on and that was it for them. The experienced
guys could rattle off the bad bidders strictly from memory and they traded
information on that type of thing so a bad bid at house X, was likely to get you
banned across the board.
I recall being shocked to take a $52,000 bid on a 1952 Mickey
Mantle baseball card in perfect shape. I remember literally shaking and
asking the caller, "are you sure?". He laughed. It was nothing to
him. I also remember getting pretty worked up anytime someone called to
get a quote on my statue or, heaven forbid, bid on it. Everyone in the
room knew the deal and they would tell me, "...this guy wants to know about lot
880!", so it was great fun.
I felt that this auction house did a great job on the catalog
writeup and really did a good job selling him and I got a fair price, although I
was hoping for more. The thing that they did that annoyed me was that
there was a person there who pretty much figured he was going to be my agent,
which in and of itself would have been a good idea with all of his sports
memorabilia contacts. The problem was, I tested him to see what he was
willing to do and the answer was NOTHING. He just thought that he would
scoop up 10 or 15% of anything I did without lifting a finger on his own on my
behalf. I gave him the heave-ho and to this day, I don't think he realizes
that he was being vetted by me and that he blew it. He could easily have
made a lot of money with me. Easily. Now, I'll never list with him
again. But for that one week back then, I had a ball.
