The Pecan Park Eagle

14 K Gold Ring / Ring Exterior: "Major League Baseball Players Alumni" - Ring Interior: "Jerry Witte, St. Louis Browns, 46-47"

Twas the afternoon prior to the night before – the Night Before Christmas. In surer words, yesterday, Dec. 23, 2011.

Things were moving along on the gentle flow and slowdown of normal activity to holiday speed when I arrived back at the house and checked my e-mail for new messages. Among several, I found a couple of comments on a column I had written a long while back, one entitled “Jerry Witte’s Last Ballgame.”  Each was a request for moderator approval, which always means that the author had to be a first time poster. At WordPress, a comment from a newcomer is always stopped for moderator approval until approval is granted the first time. After the first approval, readers may get their comments posted straight away to each column on any subject, with the moderator maintaining the right to either edit or delete any post.

The first request had come in from someone named Robert Rodriguez and it read as follows: “Great Article…I don’t know how else to contact Bill (McCurdy) or a member of Mr. Witte’s family. Can someone please contact me via email so I can give you my contact phone number. Extremely Important!”

That one got my attention. The second follow-up request merely locked me into riveting focus mode. It also had come from Robert Rodriguez on the same subject: “I forgot to mention (that) this is regarding an item, I came across, that I believe belonged to Mr. Witte.”

I immediately responded by e-mailing my Internet contact information to Mr. Rodriguez and he almost as instantly responded with his own direct e-mail, his phone number, and this message:

“Mr McCurdy, Thank you very much for contacting me…My brothers & I own some stores that Buy Gold & Silver. Recently there was a purchase made at one of our stores & being that I am a huge Baseball Fan and collector, my brothers brought the item to my attention. It is A 14k Major League Baseball Players Alumni Ring engraved (“)Jerry Witte St. Louis Browns 46-47.(“)

“After reading about Mr. Witte I simply needed to know if this is a Ring that was lost, stolen or sold off. I just felt I needed to notify you & his family about this. Can you please contact me at your earliest convenience? 

“Respectfully, Robert Rodriguez”  

When we then spoke by phone, I learned more of Mr. Rodriguez’s attempts to find someone who might care about the fate of this ancient gold ring. He called the Houston Astros after finding my story of Jerry Witte’s only trip to the downtown ballpark to throw out a first pitch in 2001 as one of the last surviving Houston Buffs, but he was simply told by the MLB club that their records do not go back that far.

The Internet turned out to be our Good Samaritan of History’s best friend. That is where I think that Robert Rodriguez learned of the book that Jerry Witte and I had written of his life and baseball playing career. “A Kid From St. Louis” was published in 2003, the year following Jerry Witte’s death.

I told Mr. Rodriguez how thrilled I felt that all of Jerry Witte’s seven daughters would be to learn of what he had found. I asked him to hang loose while I made some calls to the family. The short of it for here is that one of the daughters, Dr. Zita Witte Maxwell, was able to contact Mr. Robert Rodriguez and make tentative arrangements to meet with him and me to see the ring sometime next week. If all goes well, the missing MLBPA ring of Jerry Witte will be spared the melting pot and be back in the hands of the family who loved him before this year ends.

Neither Zita nor I remember the ring, but that’s not surprising. Jerry Witte was not a jewelry guy. He wore his wedding ring forever, but that was all I ever saw. Zita thinks he may have kept the prodigal ring in a drawer at home. According to Zita Witte Maxwell, burglars robbed her parents’ East End home about 1986. Jerry lost some guns in that theft and his wife Mary Witte lost some jewelry. It was highly possible that Jerry also may have lost his MLBPA ring in the same incident and possibly never even realized it – since wearing anything beyond his wedding ring on a daily basis apparently bore little importance to the old slugging first baseman of the Houston Buffs and St. Louis Browns.

The ring is still important and deserving of a fate better than meltdown. It is a connection symbol for Jerry Witte and his history with baseball, his family, and a life well lived. Now the lost and forgotten ring finds its way home to the family who loved Jerry Witte in life and from here to forever. It’s almost as though the soul of Jerry Witte got a holiday fly by pass to revisit Houston on the Night Before Christmas 2011.

Thank God for good people like Robert Rodriguez. He sent me a text that simply read that he was “Very Happy to know the ring will be back in the right hands…Hav a Merry Xmas.”  

Talk about understated eloquence. The man’s heart has spoken by his actions. Because of people like Robert Rodriguez, we can all feel a little better today about life and this world we inhabit. It’s all there for us in the spiritual gist and true grit heart of  this freshly factual and still unfolding Baseball Christmas story.

Merry Christmas, Everybody!