SPL PEOPLE
He’s Got Balls
Collector Makes History With Autographed Baseball Collection PHOTOS/MARCIA BIGGS
BY MARCIA BIGGS Dennis Schrader is full of stories. Funny stories. Remarkable stories. Stories that take you back to another day and time throughout the history of the American game of baseball. He’s full of trivia, like remembering which team won the world series in 1945 and how a deaf major league player led to the birth of baseball hand signals. He’s got nearly 5,000 tales to tell, each of them centered around a name scribbled on a baseball. Dennis Schrader, who lives in Tampa Bay, is the collector and owner of the world’s largest autographed baseball collection. The 74-yearold has been collecting autographed baseballs since he was a tyke. “It was 1956 and I was 9 years old,” he says. “I made 25 cents a day as a New York Yankees ball boy. They were doing spring training here at Al Lang Field. I was sitting on a bench and a ball rolled over, I picked it up and a man comes over and says ‘hey kid, you want me to sign that ball’ ... it was Mickey Mantle ...that’s how it started.” Schrader has spent decades scouring the internet, phoning prospective sellers, attending countless sports memorabilia
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shows. Some of the names on the balls are faded and barely legible, others are clearly recognizable. Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe. Wait. Marilyn Monroe? Yep, they both autographed one baseball. It’s one of 4,999 autographed baseballs that make up the Schrader’s Little Cooperstown exhibit at the St. Petersburg Museum of History. Before it was installed at the museum in 2013, the now internationally recognized collection filled Schrader’s house where collector clubs, major athletes and team managers, public officials and sometimes celebrities would be invited to stop by for a gander. When the museum agreed to house the collection, he jumped at it (technically the exhibit is on loan, he adds). Now the world can visit his revered collection, something that makes Schrader happy. Schrader’s collection earned the Guinness Book of World Records title for the largest Collection of Autographed Baseballs in 2011, with 4,220. This year, he was inducted into the inaugural Hobby Hall of Fame by Sports Collectors Digest.
