Winter Auction 2018 Ending February 17
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/18/2018
When Bob Shiminske’s high school baseball team won a league title in the summer of 1958, his older brother treated him to a trip to Boston to see the Red Sox, and Ted Williams in particular. The Red Sox star was coming off his batting crown season where he hit a massive .388, and now at the age of 40 was on the way to do it again. Bob’s brother made the acquaintance of the bartender of the hotel bar where Ted Williams resided and learned the ballplayer’s game-day schedule.
The next morning, Bob and his brother went to the hotel restaurant and met the Red Sox slugger. The Shiminske boys took a picture with Williams in the parking lot, and then proceeded to Fenway to catch Ted take batting practice. As Bob Shiminske writes in his letter of provenance, “As he came to the dugout after BP, he looked up at me and said “hey kid do you want this?” I couldn’t believe it!”
The Hillerich & Bradsby W183 model bat is un-cracked and shows heavy use. The barrel is covered with ball marks and stitch impressions. There are cleat imprints on all sides of the barrel and vintage red and green bat rack paint streaks are visible. As you’d expect on a Williams bat, there is checking and some dead wood from repeated ball contact. The model number “W183” is stated into the knob end over which a faint number “9” is present. Still clinging to the handle is a mixture of olive oil and rosin, Ted Williams’ own gripping substance. According to former Red Sox bat boy John Orlando, Jr., Ted would have him scrape off the residue build up with a butter knife when it was too thick. This bat displays evidence of this unique cleaning process. Orlando also related that Williams would customarily break in new bats in batting practice as well as use ones that he “retired”. As far as a well used Williams gamer, the bat has it all. The bat comes with an LOA from MEARS (314075), who graded this bat an A9 and a LOA from PSA/DNA (1B07170), who graded this stick a GU 8.5 for the game use and a signed letter from Robert Shiminske for the provenance.