BY TOM EDWARDS
Found this at Sports Collectors Digest @
http://www.SPORTSCOLLECTORSDIGEST.COM

Thanks to NYGPS member Keith Remland for spotting it!!
Looks like a great site for collectors!! Happy Passover & Easter to you all!!

My interest in baseball memorabilia began shortly after a visit to Ebbets Field to see my hometown Brooklyn Dodgers play the Milwaukee Braves. Watching a team with rookie manager Walter Alston and players such as Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider and Gil Hodges made it easy to become a fan of the game.
In those days, my collection consisted of baseball cards, yearbooks and magazines. Over the years, I have enjoyed adding tobacco cards, press pins, autographed baseballs, bats, lithographs, books, postcards and seats to my collection.
Of those, I would put the seats at the top of the list of memorabilia that provides the biggest fun factor. Having spent a lot of my youth at Ebbets Field, Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds, I set a goal years ago of adding seats from those classic ballparks to my collection.
In the 1980s, I saw an ad in a memorabilia publication for a row of three seats from the Polo Grounds. The owner lived about two hours from where my wife and I lived at the time, so we drove up to take a look. After a very brief negotiation, it was a done deal. One park down, two to go. Although I had those seats from the home of the New York Giants, I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to add a row of four floor standing seats with the N.Y. logo on both ends, so that row was added to our sports room.
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Found this great article from some years back by Allan Barra that appeared in Sports Illustrated. Spoke to the artist Thom Ross and suggested he contact NYC Parks Department to get his work displayed at the redidcation of the Brush Stairway. Enjoy!!

-It has been said that baseball is the only thread that ties America together over three centuries. If so, as artist Thom Ross has discovered, it is a slender and fragile thread.

Ross, who lives in Seattle, came to New York five years ago to commemorate the most famous defensive play in baseball history, on its 50th anniversary. As every baseball fan knows, on Sept. 29, 1954, in Game 1 of the World Series, the Cleveland Indians’ Vic Wertz slammed a ball deep into the Polo Grounds center field, traveling an estimated 450-460 feet from home plate. There it landed in the glove of the Giants’ young phenom Willie Mays, who, running furiously with his back to home plate, caught the ball, wheeled around and fired it back into the infield to complete a play that, in the words of Birmingham News sports editor Alf Van Hoose (who had covered Mays since he played for the Birmingham Black Barons), “you had to see not to believe.”

It may have been true, as Mays later insisted, that he made better catches during his career, but no one has ever argued that no greater play has been made in all of World Series history.
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New York Giants Preservation Society Meeting (Surprise, AZ)
New York Giants Preservation Society Meeting
9:00 a.m., Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Sun City Grand Chaparral Center (Pima Room)
19781 N. Remington Drive, Surprise, AZ 85374

Unlike the San Francisco Giants move from New York, the New York Giants Preservation Society remains physically entrenched in New York. On April 10, 2013, however, we are heading west … sort of. Co-President Steven Rothschild has scheduled a meeting in Surprise, Arizona, on April 10, 2013. It should be a terrific time for all.

Come meet Eddie Logan, 1957 Giants batboy whose father and grandfather were both clubhouse managers for the Giants at the Polo Grounds, and Frank Daniel, a ballparks expert who attended the final game at the Polo Grounds.

Our previous two meetings with Joshua Prager and the World Series Trophy Tour in NY were terrific events. Hope to see you there!-Steve

Our 2nd meeting of the year will take place on April 23rd at Berginos Baseball Clubhouse (67 East 11 Street New York, NY 10003 (212) 226-7150, at 6:30PM. This is a Tuesday Night. I am pleased to announce th…at Dr. Lawrence Hogan will be our guest speaker. He has penned SO MANY SEASONS IN THE SUN: A Century and More of Conversation with Baseball’s Greatest Clubhouse Managers. Books will be available to be purchased and signed. If you are interested in attending and are not on my regular email list, please RSVP ASAP. Last day to respond is by March 23. Should be a wonderful and entertaining evening. Come early and check out the Clubhouse for great baseball gifts and hobnob (Wizard of Oz all over the place these days!) with other NYGPS members.

by: Brandon Loomis The Republic | azcentral.com

By day, the lights are about the least obvious visual attractions at Phoenix Municipal Stadium. But what else around the Cactus League shouts louder about ba…seball’s hopeless devotion to the past?

The rusty sandstone buttes of Papago Park loom large beyond the outfield, and a perfectly groomed lawn is center stage on game days. The posts that raise the lights 100 feet above the playing field have shined down on all of this and much more.

The park, built in 1964 and updated twice since, is the oldest active home to Arizona’s spring-training circuit, now that Tucson’s Hi Corbett Field is no longer in the mix. But as anyone walking the concourse behind the stands along the third-base line may have read in a concrete inscription added a decade ago, it’s those 10 tall, steel cylinders that really speak to the good old days.

Willie Mays watched his drive float past them when he hit the park’s first home run. But even that wasn’t the beginning.
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The Hall of Fame in Cooperstown will be honoring the San Francico Giants Organization, and it NY roots, the weekend of June 22 and June 23rd. Throughout the weekend Giants fans can learn abo…ut the history of the Giants through guided tours and memorabilia. The Hall will also offer a special live video conference tour of AT&T Park. To top it off the 2012 World Series Trophy will be available for picture taking both days. I have called the Hall of Fame for verification and they told me a formal program release will be out shortly and I will post it as soon as available. Thanks to NYGPS member Paul Kocak and his friend Dennis for the tip. Sounds like a wonderful weekend!!

NYGPS Member author Joshua Prager (Echoing Green) has a new book out called Half Life. Here is a short synopsis from an incredibly talented author and person:

“After living with a disability for 22-plus years, and trying in vain to write about it for almost as many, I’ve finally gotten my thoughts down on paper. My book is titled “Half-Life: Reflections from Jerusalem on a Broken Neck.”

The book is now available!! The book is downright svelte–35,000 words. It is an e-book and costs $3.99. You can purchase it at Amazon. (You don’t need an e-reader to read it. You can read it on your computer.) Here is the link.
http://www.amazon.com/Half-Life-Reflections-Jerusalem-Broken-ebook/dp/B00BJSN040/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361776712&sr=8-1&keywords=half-life+prager
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Was at the site 2/19/2013. Here is the up-to-date signage at the Brush Stairway in Upper Manhattan, site of the Polo Grounds.

Here was where the stairway was. It has been completely removed with visible restoration very much underway. The landing with the inscription has also been removed and is being resurfaced etc. to look like it used to in 1913 when the stairs were built. Should be beautiful when completed and a big assest to the community as the walk down and around the bluff must be difficult and time consuming.

MLB, GIANTS, METS, YANKS, AMONG CONTRIBUTORS TO RESTORATION OF 100
-YEAR- OLD STRUCTURE
By Paul Post / Special to MLB.com

Ed Lucas ran down the John T. Brush Stairway, behind the Polo Grounds, a little boy thrilled about going to his first big league ballgame.

He and his father, Ed Sr., a lifelong Giants fan, were making their way down from Coogan’s Bluff, the hillside overlooking the horseshoe-shaped ballpark in Upper Manhattan.

Several years later, Lucas negotiated the steep concrete steps more slowly, because this time he couldn’t see them. At 12 years old, he was blinded by a freak baseball sandlot accident while recreating Bobby Thomson’s famed “Shot Heard Round the World,” the pennant-winning homer hit on Oct. 3, 1951.

Now 18, his love for baseball hadn’t dimmed. In fact, the anticipation was even greater because he was going to interview the New York Giants’ greatest player, Willie Mays.

“That was 1957, the last year the Giants were in New York,” said Lucas, of Union, N.J. “I remember holding on my uncle’s arm and going down the steps very slowly from Coogan’s Bluff so I could go into the Polo Grounds through the press gate. My uncle, Gene Furey, was carrying a large Pentron reel-to-reel tape recorder. The door we entered went right through to the dugout, because if you remember, the clubhouses at the Polo Grounds were in center field. We were greeted by an attendant named Barney O’Toole. He set the tape recorder up in the dugout and brought different players over — Willie Mays, Bobby Thomson, Gail Harris, Whitey Lockman, Don Mueller.”
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SULLIVAN COUNTY NYGPS MEMBERS

First video is from Finnerty’s in NYC:
http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=25564327&topic_id=8878828&c_id=sf”>
When that concludes, click the right arrow and the second one states Giants visit NY Giants Preservation Society. Click on that for a snippet of our group’s private ceremony.

Thanks SF Giants Productions!!