LOT #51740 |
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1927 Lou Gehrig Professional Model Bat, PSA/DNA GU 6....
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Sold on May 12, 2023 for:
$75,000.00
Bid Source: Internet bidder
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Description
1927 Lou Gehrig Professional Model Bat, PSA/DNA GU 6. Gehrig was once quoted as saying, "I'm not a headline guy. I know that as long as I was following Ruth to the plate I could have stood on my head and no one would have known the difference." Despite the fact that he chose to record his first great season the Summer and Fall that the Babe knocked out sixty, the headline writers did not fail to notice the hometown boy from Columbia University. With one top newspaper man from each American League city casting a vote for Most Valuable Player, Henry Louis Gehrig was found at the leading edge of a vast divide between himself and the "also-rans," earning seven first-place votes for a landslide victory. While the legend of the indestructible Iron Horse would only continue to grow through the many hundreds of consecutive games that would follow, the season of 1927 was Gehrig's announcement to the baseball world that there was another unimaginably mighty bat in the House that Ruth Built.The experts at PSA/DNA have definitively assigned delivery of this signature model "His 4/16-27 (G76)" Hillerich & Bradsby to a Gehrig order dated September 7, 1927, linking it to the last month of the greatest Yankees campaign in history. It was returned to the famous Louisville, Kentucky factory of its birth on Valentine's Day of 1931 according to factory sidewriting, but only that date is clearly legible. Under a spectrometer, the experts at PSA/DNA were able to determine that the surname of the player contains the letter "P," thus somebody other than Gehrig.
Where this bat had been--and who used it--during that three years and five months away from from the H&B factory remains an unsolvable mystery, and the PSA/DNA letter acknowledges that, "The overall condition of the bat does not allow us to determine the amount of game use attributable to Gehrig." We should note that Gehrig was known to use only Hanna Batrite and Spalding bats during the 1929 and 1930 seasons, so it's certainly very possible that the bat was left in Gehrig's locker during that span and used by him either before those two seasons, or after, or both. And then, at some point, it was passed on to an unknown player who loved it enough to send it in for duplication.
At just under thirty-six inches (35.75") in length and thirty-five and a half ounces (35.5 oz.) in weight, it's a perfect match to that Murderer's Row season order, and substantial game use appears in ball marks, cleat marks and a cracked and repaired handle. Small chips of wood have been lost at handle and knob, to no ill aesthetic effect. Barrel is lightly planed to accept factory sidewriting.
If this bat were able to provide ironclad assurance of use by Gehrig to share the spotlight with its delivery to him in 1927, the price realized might well soar into seven digits, so the enigma could very well be characterized as a "glass half full" to the bank statement of its winning bidder. LOA from PSA/DNA, GU 6.
Auction Info
2023 May 11 - 13 Spring Sports Catalog Auction #50062 (go to Auction Home page)
Auction Dates
May, 2023
11th-13th
Thursday-Saturday
Bids + Registered Phone Bidders: 42
Lot Tracking Activity: N/A
Page Views: 717
Buyer's Premium per Lot:
20% of the successful bid per lot.
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