When the Chasing Dreams: Baseball & Becoming American exhibition opened at the Maltz Museum this summer, we started learning things about our volunteers, funders, co-workers and visitors. People who experience the exhibition began sharing stories about their favorite baseball memories and Friends of the Maltz Museum president Victor Goodman was no exception. With only a couple of weeks left to see Chasing Dreams, Goodman dropped by the office to show some of us some of his baseball memorabilia collection and talk a little bit about the Cleveland giveaways he’s kept and what they mean to him.
Are you from Cleveland originally? Were you always an Indians fan?
No, I am from New York and I grew up there and that’s why this baseball I brought is interesting to me. It commemorates the 1954 Indians. That team won 111 games and was one of the greatest teams ever. I was a New York Giants fan in 1954. That was the year the Giants played the Indians for the World Series, sweeping them in four games. It was the Series when Willie Mays made his miraculous over-the-back catch of a ball hit by Vic Wertz who was a dominant player for the Indians. So I grew up rooting for the Giants. But I moved here in 1974 and, as they say, if you can’t be with the one you love you love the one you’re with. I became an Indians fan and, since the great Willie Mays never played here after that, I didn’t have my allegiance tested.
Did your dad take you to your first game back in New York?
My dad owned a candy store in Queens. There was a promotion in those days that if you sold Chesterfield 3-1 over any other brand of cigarette you were awarded baseball tickets and memorabilia. I went to games with my dad because we used to get free tickets to see the Giants. I grew up in the ‘50s when the most dominant team in baseball was the Yankees. The Yankees always won. That’s precisely why I didn’t root for them. The Giants couldn’t win until they did. In the 1950s they managed to get to the World Series twice. I have a story though. After my dad passed away, I found out how much a baseball experience we shared actually impacted him. My father lived until he was 95, but when he turned 80 I brought him to an Indians game at Cleveland Stadium. For $25 I got his name on the scoreboard and a girl came and threw confetti and gave him a birthday baseball cap and certificate. I never realized how much that meant to my dad. When he passed away and I was going through his things, he still had the hat, certificate and the game-day ticket.
Do you prefer to watch a game at the ballpark?
If I can, of course. I brought this ticket from a World Series game that I went to in 1995. This World Series ticket was $25. My seat was in the upper deck, but it was $25. Here is the ticket from the All Star Game in 1997. An All-Star Game just two years later was a $70 ticket. If you can afford to go there’s nothing like being in a ballpark because you have everything going on around you. But I love to sit and watch the game on TV almost as much. When the season is over every year, I miss that I can’t turn on the radio and listen to baseball. I have always loved football but it is just not the same as baseball. Maybe it’s because baseball is an everyday game. It feels like with baseball you are always involved in a game.
What did you bring today?
Each one of these treasures depicts a moment in time in the history of the Indians. The first one is a copy of the game book from the last game ever played at Cleveland Stadium. I went downtown hoping I might be able to get a scalper’s ticket on the street. No one was around, so I just walked down to the stadium. In front of Gate A there was a giant tent filled with thousands of these books. I asked if I could buy one and the guy asked to see my game ticket. I didn’t have one and he said I couldn’t have a book without a ticket. Now, there were maybe 80,000 people already in the stadium, the game had started and there were literally thousands of books left. That’s when a man who overheard our conversation came over. He handed me a ticket and said, “Now sell the guy a book.” I thanked him and he asked, “Do you want to go to the game?” I said, “Of course, but I don’t have a ticket.” He said, “Well, you’ve got one now.” He wouldn’t let me pay for it and he wouldn’t let me buy him anything. And so, because of the kindness of a stranger, I got to go to the very last game ever played at Cleveland Stadium. I wrote about that story for an essay contest with the Indians a few years later and won ten tickets to the game.
This bat was given to some 20,000 fans. It’s a real wooden bat. What makes it special though is that when it was printed, they didn’t spell the team name correctly. Can you imagine buying a premium to give away and not spelling “Indians” correctly?
This particular hat says 1995 World Series Champions Cleveland Indians. Of course the Indians didn’t win the World Series in 1995, the Atlanta Braves did. When they play a championship series, some of these things are already pre-printed in anticipation. They can’t sell them in America but somebody must have decided to close them out in Canada. I was in Toronto at an outlet store when I noticed it. How many people have a hat that says the Indians won the World Series in 1995 when they didn’t?
The ultimate treasure is a signature baseball that says “To Victor from Bob Feller.” He was brought in a by a company for a show I attended for work. Being that I was a vendor there, I got there very early. That’s how I not only got him to sign a ball to me and to my son and my daughter. He was there eight hours and by the end of the night he was just signing his name.
What if you don’t go to a game?
So how do I get the giveaway? I go down to the stadium and take one or two other bobbleheads that I have. I find a family going to the game because they will get four or five of the same bobblehead, why wouldn’t they trade for something they don’t have? You know what? I have never failed. Within a few seconds I will trade with someone for the giveaway.
What makes a good giveaway in your mind?
It captures a moment in time. For some strange reason, I still haven’t figured out why I saved this program from 1983, but what is interesting about the program is that when you read and you see that box seats were 8 dollars, reserve seats were 6, general admission was $3.50 and bleachers were 2 bucks. And if you were a senior citizen on day games, all day games except opening day and Sundays, you got in for a dollar. Now, when I look at this program and the advertising, I go back in time. By the way, what’s interesting about this World Series book is that there is a score card for all seven games and a picture of every single player and every single person on the team. The voice of the Cleveland Indians back in 1983 was Joe Tait. He went on to do play by play for the Cleveland Cavaliers and many people might not even remember he used to be the voice of the Indians.
I also have a giveaway here that depicts the time when Rick Manning caught the 27th out in Len Barker’s otherwise perfect game. I also brought my miniature of Larry Doby’s statue. For the near 40 years I’ve been here my biggest regret on behalf of the Indians is that it took them until 2015 to really honor Larry Doby. He came in right after Jackie Robinson and it was almost like he was forgotten. It’s just sad. He could have been and should have been honored more during his lifetime. The achievement of being the first black player in the American League should have been a bigger event.
And then there’s this fictional Jobu that everyone seemed to want . . . Jobu. If you don’t know what that is, it was a god that the fictional god that the outfielder prayed to in the movie Major League. I was told that people were beating each other to get this giveaway. In fact, it was deemed the promotion of the year in the Minor League, I think. They gave it away again this year and [fellow Museum volunteer] Jeff Kaplan didn’t take one. He told me he didn’t care about those things. As far as fictional characters go, at one of the games I went to they gave away their mascot dressed up as the boy from A Christmas Story, and because I had tickets and walked in early they handed it to me.
What do you hope your family will do with your collection?
I hope someone will decide to store all this and that they will look at them or play with them and they will remember me. I am a firm believer that you never die as long as someone remembers you lived. Only when there is no more memory of you do you die. I hope that someone keep them and think of me.
Chasing Dreams: Baseball & Becoming American includes 145 artifacts including memorabilia, giveaways and game-worn uniforms. What artifact was the most interesting to you?
Interestingly, the picture of Moe Berg. While doing research to be a guide for the exhibition I actually read two books on him. Here’s a guy who wasn’t really much of a professional baseball player. In fact I think there was a joke that he could speak all these languages but he couldn’t catch in any of them. His really was the story of a guy who passed through baseball but actually was a spy who almost assassinated a top-ranking Nazi.
To see more of Goodman’s collection, click here.
Have treasured baseball memories of your own? Share them with us on social media using the hashtag #chasingdreamsCLE.
—Samantha Fryberger, Director, Marketing & Communications
