One of the greatest enduring legends from baseball's Golden Age is that slugger Joe Sewell used the same bat throughout his entire major league career. While it makes a fun story, the truth is slightly different. The origin of the yarn is that he is reported to have used the same bat for eight of his 13 seasons in the majors. His treatment of his bats was well documented: the future Hall of Famer meticulously homed the surface with a Coca-Cola bottle to seal the wood's pores and then coated an infinite amount of times with tobacco juice. Joe Sewell earned a reputation as one of the game's greatest hitters. In the years prior to Ted William's being known for having the best eyesight in the game, it was Sewell who was known for his uncanny sense of the strike zone. Sewell struck out so few times that umpires were said to call balls on anything Sewell did not swing at knowing that if it were a strike he surely would have hit it. Indeed, Sewell's skills were so refined that twice he recorded just three whiffs in a season and his 167.7 at-bats per strikeout in 1932 is still the major league record. Unlike most stars of the day, for most of his career Joe Sewell did not use a bat stamped with his signature. Sewell preferred to swing the same model used by the greatest hitter in the game: Ty Cobb. That's why this well-used Sewell gamer bears the familiar signature of Ty Cobb on its barrel.

     The Hillerich & Bradsby C28 Ty Cobb Model bat shows heavy game use. Many ball marks are found on the bat's barrel, evidence of Sewell's duels with the likes of Walter Johnson, Waite Hoyt and Lefty Grove. The bat's surface has taken on a deep warm tone from both age and Sewell's coating of tobacco juice which he believed beneficial to preserving the wood surface. As was a Joe Sewell trait, a single strand of athletic tape wraps around the handle for an enhanced grip. The bat's spec's match a May 18th, 1926 order for "Old Ty Cobb" model bats. This was referred to by Hillerich & Bradsby as the C28 model. The Hall of Famer has signed this extraordinary piece no less than three times, twice in black ink and once in silver.

     The bat remained in Sewell's possession until just before he passed away in 1990. Prior to his passing the Hall of Famer sold a few of his bats, this being one of two he parted with. The other example was sold in a recent auction for over $65,000 in 2013. This Sewell bat offered here is the only one to be examined and verified by PSA/DNA who have bestowed their highest grade of GU10 on this historic piece. While Joe Sewell didn't use a single bat throughout his entire career as legend has it, the number of bats he used was surely among the lowest of any Hall of Famer, making this signed gamer all the more significant. Letter of Authenticity from PSA/DNA (1B09157) who have graded it a GU10 and JSA (Y40081).

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