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 Real ball, real debate Authenticity of possible Mantle home run ball in question
Posted: Wednesday April 21, 1999 03:41 PM
HOUSTON (AP) -- Dale Cicero's autographed baseball might be the one that Mickey Mantle hit for his 500th home run, but the slugger's widow says it's a fake. There's a lot of money riding on the truth. The ball was about to be auctioned last January at Guernsey's auction house in New York, just minutes after Mark McGwire's record-setting 70th home run ball from last season sold for $3 million. Appraisers believed the McGwire momentum could help push the price of the Mantle ball as high as $250,000, the Texas Journal of the Wall Street Journal reported in Wednesday's editions. Then the telephone at Guernsey's rang. It was Merlyn Mantle, the Yankee great's widow, who told the auctioneer that the ball was a phony and that she had the real souvenir in her Dallas home. Guernsey's officials pulled the ball off the auction. Cicero, a firefighter from Bend, Ore., has been crusading ever since to convince collectors he's got the genuine article. He is hinting at suing Mrs. Mantle for interfering with the auction. Cicero and Mrs. Mantle agree that the slugger turned over the 500th homer ball to close friend and onetime business partner Harold Youngman of Baxter Springs, Kan., shortly after the fan who caught the ball returned it to him. Mrs. Mantle said her husband later got the ball back and gave it to her. But Cicero said Youngman, who died in 1990, gave the ball to a baseball museum, which displayed it with other Mantle memorabilia. He said he bought it three years ago for $24,200 from a collector who bought it from the museum in 1995. Mrs. Mantle said she plans to put her ball in a museum she's helping build near Grove, Okla. Mantle is an Oklahoma native. "I really resent having to prove I've got the ball. I was married to Mick for 43 years," she said. But some sports memorabilia authenticators and friends of Mantle and Youngman think Cicero has the real ball, the Journal reported. Michael Heffner, president of Leland's Auctions, a sports memorabilia auction house in New York, has studied photographs of the balls and traced the ownership of Cicero's ball. "There's only one conclusion to draw, and that is that he has the ball," Heffner said. Mrs. Mantle's ball doesn't have the American League's official stamp or a date. Mrs. Mantle admitted as much but said she'll let authentication experts examine the ball -- something Cicero has been pushing for. Memorabilia experts also said the bold Mantle signature across the center of her ball is written in a style he didn't use until the 1980s. Mrs. Mantle said Mickey re-signed the ball in the 1980s, tracing over the faded, original signature. Cicero's official American League ball is dated May 14, 1967, and bears a signature that experts said matches other items Mantle signed in the 1960s, the Journal reported. Jimmy Spence, a baseball authenticator in Orwigsburg, Pa., who reviewed photos of both balls, believes Cicero's is authentic. "That ball now has a black mark on it," Spence said. "He could put that ball in another auction, and it wouldn't get half as much."
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