What's the Deal with Tony Lazzeri?

[BretMan]

Saw a fairly nice Marathon Tony Lazzeri glove on eBay with a "Buy-it-Now" price of $499. That price made me do a double-take!

At the same time, another Lazzeri glove- this one in much better condition- was running with an open-auction format. That auction just ended at $330.

The first glove with the fixed-price didn't sell. Now it has been re-listed with a "BIN" price of $359 (probably still too high when compared to the nicer one that sold for just less than that).

The glove itself looks identical to the Marathon-issued Joe Gordon personal model from the same era. It's a buckle-back glove with a somewhat unusual wrist strap arrangement and a reinforced split-finger design. Lazzeri was a Yankee and eventual Hall-of-Famer, having been inducted by the veteran's committee nearly 50 years after he played his last game.

Strangely, while Lazzeri gloves can be found in the "Catalog Source Book" (both as "found" and "cataloged") and in the "Autograph Glove Finder" (which is basically a cross-reference of the "Catalog" book), his gloves are nowhere to be found in the "Vintage Glove Price Guide" (an omission by oversight?).

Those prices seem to be on the high-end, especially when compared to similar gloves of the same age endorsed by better-known players. Is this just a case of a convergence of factors- age, condition, rarity, Yankee player, HOF'er- coming together to net a high price?

I wonder if Lazzeri's omission from the price guide has led some to believe that this glove is more scarce than it actually is?

Link to Completed eBay auction

Link to "BIN" Glove

[jwoody]

Tony Lazzeri's glove can be found in the VINTAGE BASEBALL GLOVE POCKET PRICE GUIDE-NO.8....Page 14, VG $225 Excellent $350 NM $625 Listed Very Rare...

[BretMan]

jwoody,

Now this is flat-out strange...

I have a copy of "The Vintage Baseball Glove Pocket Price Guide- No. 8", copyright 2004. I searched every section for a Lazzeri listing to no avail.

Page 14 in my copy covers "Pre War Glove Hall of Fame Models", roughly the second half of the alphabet. The only two players listed whose names begin with the letter "L", the first two on the page, are "Al Lopez" and "Ted Lyons".

I dug up edition no. 7 and, sure enough, on page 14 of that version, which covers the first half of the alphabet, Lazzeri is right there between "Lajoie" and "Lindstrom".

A closer inspection shows that my copy of no. 8 has omitted all of the pre war HOF'ers whose name begins with the letter "K" ("Kelly" and "Klein") and all other players beginning with the letter "L", save for the two I mentioned!

Obviously, this is a printing error. Is this a known error for edition no. 8? Was this mistake caught and corrected in a later printing?

I know that I have seen no. 8 advertised before as a "revised" edition, but had always assumed the "revision" referred to the general updates made from edition no. 7 and not a revised printing of the same edition.

[softball66]

Right you were. When we slightly revised the No. 8 guide it kicked out some of the Ks and some on another page that we caught. Who'd thought Tony would cause this much ruckus?
As regards the value on Tony's gloves. Who knows. Yankee mystique maybe, hard to find glove too.
He's part of one of my favorite trivia questions. Name three New York Yankee players who hit 60 home runs?

[BretMan]

Took some digging to find the "catch" to that trivia question.

Of course, Ruth and Maris are the two easy answers. But Tony? While a solid offensive player, he never hit more than 18 in a season while with the Yankees.

So here's the rub: The question doesn't say "while with the Yankees". Tony hit 60 dingers while with the Salt Lake City Bees in 1925!

Joe, thanks for clearing up my confusion with the price guide. I was hoping that the information wasn't there and I was just not seeing it. The print in that pocket-sized book is pretty darn small, but my eyes aren't that bad...yet!

[softball66]

The air must have been thin at Salt Lake that year. But the question throws people and one has to think his way through it (not in the majors)
The pocket guide does have tiny print and that's how I missed those "Ls" with these old eyes. I just printed 100 of the revised and have already sold out so will be reprinting again shortly.
Sorry about the confusion. The second Lazzeri glove on ebay just sold too I understand but didn't get the selling price.

[jackwhale]

And Tony Lazzeri was in the news yesterday! He still holds the AL record for most RBI's in one game (#11).

[BretMan]

Yeah, that was pretty cool! Here we had just had a topic about him and his name pops up in the news accounts of Texas's four touchdown victory over Baltimore.

[robin_buckeye]

Yeah, but that 30-3 shellacking was just an exhibition game. The NFL regular season doesn't start for a few more weeks. What? huh? Baseball?. Sorry, never mind.