Home run! Home run!

[katster]

So, every once in a while, I poke around the couple shelves of books the library is selling to raise money. It's mostly donated books on the shelves, and a lot of paperbacks. Occasionally, there's something interesting, and I'm the sort of person who finds books cool in general anyway.

So I'm browsing and I stumble across a book entitled Real Grass, Real Heroes by Dom DiMaggio. Dom is the brother of Joe, and had a decent baseball career in his own right playing in the same outfield as Ted Williams. In fact, the book is about that last fateful year of major league baseball before World War II came crashing down on the United States' head. I'm a baseball fan in general anyway, and it'd be interesting to see what Dom had to say about the game back then, so I buy it. Fifty cents.

I get it home and set it aside, meaning to get it cataloged into LibraryThing before I put it on my shelves. It sat next to my bed untouched for a few days, and then I pick it up to catalog it. Its ISBN doesn't match anything on Amazon, so I query the LoC on the title, and in checking to make sure my copy matched, I find a note handwritten in it.

"To Gene, Best Wishes. (signed) Dom DiMaggio"

Checking the signature against items verified signed by Dom on Ebay confirms that this is very probably his signature.

Holy freaking crap. %)

Comments

[tropism.livejournal.com]

Nice friggin' find! :)

[seanyoda.livejournal.com]

Cool. I wonder who Gene is (or was).

[amberlee17.livejournal.com]

Nifty!

[happymomof2.livejournal.com]

That is way cool. The library probably never even opened it up to notice there was anything written inside. Congrats on the good find. Way to keep your eye out for interesting books...

[wjhansen.livejournal.com]

Wow! Sounds like you're the proud owner of something very, very cool!

[lirazel.livejournal.com]

Ebay has prices ranging from $20 (for something like the note you have) to $94 dollars for a cancelled check--from 1993, years after Dom stopped playing. Not that you'll want to sell it...

[neverupdated.livejournal.com]

Nice!