We normally avoid sites, but our Maryland-based SABR friend and historic Cubs fan — Bill Hickman — sent me the following heads up this morning about an auction going on right now for some possessions of the legendary Colt .45 pitcher Jim Umbricht, who died of cancer in April 1964, six months after his last appearance and retirement by the club.
Two items are involved in this online bidding at Heritage Auctions:
Jim Umbricht’s
1962 Houston Colt .45
Western-cut Travel Suit
(1) The Umbricht western-cut travel suit that 1962 Colt .45s were required to wear on road trip travel flights;
and,
Jim Umbricht’s
1963 Colt .45 Teammate-signed
Classic Home Jersey
(2) Umbricht’s 1963 Colt .45 jersey, signed by all his teammates.
AUCTION DEADLINE! Today is May 11, 2018. The auction ends in six days.
We have no stake in how you use this information beyond historical interest and bemusement, but, thank you, anyway, Bill Hickman for helping those of us from Houston to feel that we’ve now been in the big leagues long enough to see some of our historical player dress and equipment items be treated at auction as though they had been exhumed from a recently discovered ballpark parking lot tomb.
********************
Bill McCurdy
Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher
The Pecan Park Eagle
The Pecan Park Eagle 
May 12, 2018 at 12:23 am |
Jim Umbricht was chosen by the Philadelphia sportswriters as the most their most courageous athlete of the year at a banquet in the winter of 1963-64. I attended that banquet as did Jim Umbricht. I got his autograph at the banquet on a baseball I no longer have. Fred Hutchinson was diagnosed with cancer sometime around the time that the banquet took place. RIP Jim and Fred. I am critical of much that goes on in Major League Baseball but MLB has contributed many dollars and has brought a lot of awareness to the work being done in cancer treatment (Mother’s Day/breast cancer and Father’s Day/prostate cancer) and MLB deserves much credit for that.
May 12, 2018 at 7:20 am |
I don’t know what is being done to preserve the Astrodome, but there should be some kind of recognition in the form of a plaque or other suitable memorial to Jim Umbricht, since his ashes were spread over the construction site of the future domed stadium.