Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Times Square offers a superb collection of baseball sports memorabilia.
Here are just a few examples:
A 1931 Wooden Novelty postcard signed during Spring Training that has 16 autographs including Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, and Believe it or Not!
A photo of Claire Ruth, Babe Ruth’s wife.
Three seats from the original Yankee Stadium from behind home plate taken in 1923.
A movie in the theater room with a feature on The Bandits, a one-armed softball team.
A collection of Ted Williams baseball sports memorabilia from his 1994 induction and unveiling of the Ted Williams Hitters of Hall of Fame which includes his autograph, a 1950s Player of the Decade Baseball Heroes baseball card, inaugural cover to the opening of the museum, and more.
12 of the original uniforms worn by the team and a classic photograph of the Believe it or Nots with Babe Ruth laying in the foreground of the photo.*
*During WWII, Robert Ripley was committed to fundraising. In 1939, he put together a charity softball game at Madison Square Garden that included 60 celebrities to raise money for The Boys Club of New York. Ripley stacked his own team, the Believe it or Nots, that included Walter Johnson, Babe Ruth, heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey, Jimmy Durante, W.C. Fields, Al Jolson, William Randolph Hearst, to name a few.
In its day, the combined assets of the team members made it the richest and most valuable team ever assembled.
Here are some baseball sports memorabilia facts, courtesy of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Times Square:
- Ty Cobb walked up to 30 miles a day during the off-season with lead in his shoes to maintain his lower body strength.
- In 1968, San Francisco Giants Manager Alvin Dark told reporters that NASA would "put a man on the moon before Gaylord Perry hits a home run." On July 20, 1969 Perry connected for his first ever home run - 20 minutes after Neal Armstrong walked on the moon!
- Toledo, Ohio's professional baseball team was known as the Mud Hens as early as 1896 and remains the only professional sports franchise in America with a feminine name.
- Stabbed to Death by a Baseball! Stanton Walker attended a ball game and was seated between two friends when one attempted to pass an open pocket knife to the other. Just as the knife passed in front of Walker it was struck by a foul ball and driven into his heart - killing him. (1902 incident reported by Ripley in 1939).
- Belt loops did not become standard on men's trousers until after WWI, but baseball players were using them on their knickers as early as the 1800s!
- The words "strike" and "hit" mean the same in every situation except in baseball parlance.
- There are 12,386,344 possible plays in baseball!
- Carlos May is the only Major League Baseball player to ever wear his birth date on the back of his uniform - May 17.
- The odds of a baseball fan being hit by a ball at a major league game are 300,000 to 1.
Ripley’s Believe It or Not! is located in the heart of Times Square in Manhattan, New York at 234 West 42nd Street and is open daily 9 a.m. to 1 a.m. Call 212-398-3133.
Along with baseball sports memorabilia the museum offers visitors the ultimate insight into the world of the odd and bizarre with hundreds of weird and unusual artifacts displayed in more than 20 themed galleries spanning two floors.
a six-legged cow
a lock of Elvis' hair
24 shrunken heads (the most on public display anywhere on the planet)
a section of the Berlin wall
a life-size albino giraffe
And certainly don't leave out the baseball sports memorabilia!
