April 4, 2013
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Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.  Season tickets for the Boston BBC in 1903 (top) and 1876 (bottom) are being offered in Huggins & Scott's Spring auction. |
Baseball season is finally here and many fans are busy lining up their season tickets for MLB’s 2013 campaign. Collectors, likewise, are hitting the spring baseball auctions to chase down relics from seasons long gone, and in the case of Huggins & Scott Auctions, eyeballing a few original season ticket books and passes for the Boston Beaneaters Base Ball Club from the long-gone seasons of 1876 and 1903.
The auctioneer describes the 110-year-old 1903 season ticket booklet as:
“An amazingly well preserved book (which) features a gorgeous leather bound cover (bearing) lustrous gilt lettering which reads “Boston Base Ball Club, Season 1903, 104”. The page inside the front cover records the ticket holder as “Mr. Fred E. Ling” and is signed by team treasurer J.B. Billings.”
The second Boston relic in the sale from the season of 1876 is described as:
“A very appealing Boston Baseball Season Ticket pass from the NL’s inaugural season 1876. Certified Authentic by SCG this dynamic ducat also bears the signature of Team President N. T. Apollonio with JSA authentication noted on the flip. This extremely rare relic appears to be unused, as the “Admit” line is not filled out.”
The complimentary tickets from 1903 are said to be worth over $6,000 but they didn’t belong to “Fred E. Ling” as the auction house described. The tickets were actually issued to Boston team treasurer Frederick E. Long, the man who ran the day to day financial operations for the Boston franchise from the 1870s through the 1890s. Long handled all of the team bank accounts; issued paychecks to players like “Old Hoss” Radbourn and “King” Kelly; corresponded with managers like Harry Wright when the team was on the road and oversaw all of the stockholders of the club for every season he was affiliated with the Boston nine since they joined the National League in 1876.
In 1983, Long’s descendants donated his personal archive of baseball files and mementos to the National Baseball Library in Cooperstown, New York, constituting the “Frederick E. Long Papers Collection”, one of the most magnificent archives of baseball business records known to exist from the 19th century. Included in the archive is the voluminous correspondence between Long and Hall of Famers Harry Wright and A. G. Spalding, bank books, stock ledgers, cancelled checks, promissory notes and, yes, complimentary tickets issued by the club along with the lists of fans they were distributed to by Long.
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The Frederick Long Collection in Cooperstown includes a consecutive run of Long's own season ticket booklets for the seasons spanning from 1895 to 1902. Pictured above in their archival box at Cooperstown are the 1899, 1900, 1901 and 1902 booklets. (National Baseball Library, Cooperstown)
The Huggins & Scott offering of a 1903 ticket book issued to Long is curious to say the least since the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Long Papers archive (which spans from 1871 to 1905) lists the entry for Box #20, Folder 2 as: “Season Ticket Books and Passes- 1871 to 1902.” In fact, the archive includes Long’s personal complimentary ticket booklets for the seasons of 1895, 1896, 1897, 1898, 1899, 1900, 1901 and 1902. There’s no 1903 ticket booklet in Cooperstown and no 1904 or 1905 examples either. Long, however, did receive a complimentary pass from the Boston club in 1905 as evidenced in a letter from Geo. B. Billings that is currently found in the Long archive. Where, then, did the 1903 booklet being offered at auction come from?
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The 1902 season ticket booklet housed at the HOF in the Long Papers Collection (left) is the last of a series in the collection which starts in 1895. The Huggins & Scott offering (right) appears to have originated from the same collection.
We sent images of the Hall of Fame’s similar items and also asked Huggins & Scott’s Josh Wulken where his consignors acquired the 1903 ticket book and 1876 pass. Wulkan said, “We have no comment at this time.” At time of the publication of this article both lots were still included in the current sale which ends on April 11th.
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The Long Papers Collection at the HOF includes several unused 1876 season passes for the Boston BBC, two of which are numbered 122 and 123. The Huggins & Scott offering is in the exact same sequence at #124.
If it appears that the 1903 booklet may be missing from the Hall’s Long Papers Collection, the origins of the 1876 season pass are even murkier considering that the Long archive includes at least eight identical unused and unexecuted passes from the same season? Then consider that the Huggins & Scott pass is designated #124 and the Hall of Fame’s Long Papers collection includes the two preceding unused passes numbered 122 and 123. What are the odds the Huggins & Scott offerings weren’t part of the infamous 1980s heist at the Hall?
Items stolen from the Hall of Fame have been showing up in public auctions for the past few decades, but recently it appears that owners of stolen and suspect materials are becoming more confident in selling the material since the Hall has not pursued recovery of any of its property even when there is photographic documentation of the items at the Hall before they were wrongfully removed. Most recently the Hall failed to make an effort to recover an 1870 Philadelphia Athletics CDV that appeared in a Legendary auction. Items from the National Baseball Library’s August Herrmann Papers collection, Ford Frick Papers collection and photographic collections appear to have been hit the hardest by the 1980s heist which is believed to have resulted in millions of dollars in memorabilia vanishing from the institution.
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In 2006, REA sold a July 25, 1879, letter from Harry Wright to Frederick Long written in Syracuse, NY (left). The HOF's Long Collection includes a series of correspondence in that time period and a letter Wright sent to Long on July 27th from a Syracuse hotel.
The Frederick E. Long Papers collection appears to have been victimized as well, with the first strong proof of theft surfacing in a 2006 Robert Edward Auctions sale of an 1879 letter written to Long by Boston manager Harry Wright. The Long collection features a sizeable group of Wright’s correspondence with Long during the season of 1879 including a series of letters sent to Long on July 23rd, July 25th, August 3rd, and August 7th. The REA offering was a letter from Wright dated on July 27, 1879, and sent from Syracuse, New York, just like the letter Wright sent two days earlier from the Syracuse House Hotel. REA sold the letter for $4,350.
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The HOF's Long Papers archive includes signed documents featuring signatures of the most sought after Hall of Famers as evidenced by this 1890 promissory note signed by "King" Kelly. (Frederick E. Long Papers, National Baseball Library, Cooperstown, NY)
Frederick Long also maintained the stockholder records of the Boston Base Ball Club and the archive still contains Long’s handwritten ledger pages documenting every shareholders stake in the baseball club. It is suspected that the large cache of original Boston BBC stock certificates and certificate stubs that surfaced in the hobby years ago had its origins oin the Hall’s Long Collection as well. If items were, in fact, stolen from Long’s donated materials, it appears the thieves missed the most valuable items in the collection, dozens of signed cancelled payroll checks issued to Hall of Famers “King” Kelly, Dan Brouthers and “Old Hoss” Radbourn. Industry experts we spoke with said each of those signed documents would be worth anywhere between $25,000 and $100,000 each if ever offered at public auction. These rare documents from Long’s files have now been microfilmed, so any attempt of a theft would be easily uncovered by Hall officials and librarians.
The curious case of Frederick E. Long’s season tickets, however, is likely not a case the Baseball Hall of Fame is interested in solving. Although the items appearing in the Huggins & Scott sale have been reported to the Cooperstown Police Department, Hall officials refused to respond or issue a statement when contacted by Haulsofshame.com.