Bargain shopper finds baseball history

Photo of Roy Bragg

History can be found in books, antiquities, landmarks or even geography.

Ramiro Valdez found it at Goodwill.

The baseball that rolled out of a bin at the store on West Commerce might be one of the most incredible artifacts of America’s national pastime. If his research is correct, the ball was used in a rogue championship series that predates the first World Series, played in 1884, by eight years.

Valdez isn’t a hoarder. He keeps his stuff stored and out of sight, not in his living room. He’s a “meh” baseball fan. And he’s not a memorabilia collector.

Valdez has asked several experts to authenticate the ball, but those efforts have been inconclusive because it’s so rare and obscure that no scholar feels comfortable delivering a knowledgeable, defendable answer about what it is.

“I don’t know exactly what it’s worth,” he said, “but I feel it’s got to be valuable.”

Battered and yellowing, the ball remains locked away in a vault somewhere in Del Rio, where Valdez works and lives as a civil servant at Laughlin AFB during the work week.

During previous searches of Goodwill shelves, Valdez had found baseballs with the insignia “Reach AJ” and with diamonds and an alpha-numeric code printed on the hide.

He didn’t get to buy those balls, but he researched what he saw on each. A.J. Reach was a Philadelphia-based sporting-goods manufacturer that opened in 1874. Spalding became MLB’s official baseball two years later, replaced by Rawlings a century later. The diamonds and code numbers identified the age and usage of the ball.

In 2012, Valdez was once again sifting through bins when he moved one with some sports-related items. As he did so, a baseball fell from the back of the container and rolled toward him.

It must have been a sign. This time, knowing something about the history, Valdez bought the ball.

The cost? Forty-five cents.

It was an A.J. Reach-manufactured ball. That tied it to the mid-1870s. The code numbers indicated it was some sort of special ball, manufactured for a specific event.

The final clues were the signatures scribbled all over the ball: George Washington Bradley, Lipman Pike, Bill Gleason, Ned Cuthbert, Cap Anson, and a right fielder known only to baseball historians as “A. Leonard.” All of them played or managed for the Chicago White Stockings or the St. Louis Brown Stockings during the time period suggested.

Baseball is a simple game, but its rich history has texture and scope other sports will never have. From nicknames to team names to the politics of the game, baseball grew hand-in-hand with this country.

Before professional baseball became well-organized, it was only partially so. No one thought a World Series was necessary. The team with the most wins won the pennant sans a playoff.

But like the modern-day Cubs and Cardinals, the Brown Stockings and White Stockings took their rivalry seriously. This went beyond baseball play, touching on civic pride in the only activity that united both towns.

St. Louis won six of 10 games between the two in the 1876 regular season. Local papers declared the Brown Stockings as the best team in the league. The year before, Chicago had won most of the games between the two and Windy City papers made a similar proclamation.

It was decided — records aren’t clear who did so — the teams would play in a so-called “Championship of the West” for the bragging rights of baseball. That’s the special event referenced by the ball’s coding.

The championship was a one-time grudge match, a best-of-five series that wasn’t officially sanctioned by the nascent National League, to which both belonged.

St. Louis won the series 3-1.

And that makes Valdez’s battered old baseball a rare piece of Americana.

The highest known price paid for a baseball was $3 million for the one Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire sent over the left-field wall of old Busch Stadium for his 70th homer run in 1998. A Babe Ruth home-run ball from the 1933 World Series went for $805,000.

One authenticator, while unable to pin down the ball’s origins, surmised it wasn’t from the “Championship of the West.” The worst-case scenario, he wrote, was that it was still a 19th-century baseball with a lot of rare signatures on it.

Not bad for 45 cents.

Twitter: @roybragg