This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 6/16/2017
Babe Ruth changed the way baseball was played; Jackie Robinson changed the way Americans thought. When Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, more than sixty years of racial segregation in major-league baseball came to an end. He was the first acknowledged black player to perform in the Major Leagues in the twentieth century and went on to be the first to win a batting title, the first to win the Most Valuable Player award, and the first to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He won major-league baseball's first official Rookie of the Year award and was the first baseball player, black or white, to be featured on a United States postage stamp. The raw statistics only scratch the surface in evaluating Jackie Robinson as a ballplayer. Because of institutionalized racism and World War II, he did not play his first big-league game until he was twenty-eight years old, and therefore his major-league career spanned only ten seasons. His lifetime batting average was a solid .311, but because of the brevity of his career, his cumulative statistics are relatively unimpressive by Hall of Fame standards.But in what would be considered his prime years, ages twenty-eight to thirty-four, Robinson hit .319 and averaged more than 110 runs scored per season. He drove in an average of eighty-five runs, and his average of nearly fifteen home runs per season was outstanding for a middle infielder of that era. And he averaged 24 stolen bases a season for a power-laden team that didn't need him to run very often. The offered orb presents as the finest single signed Jackie Robinson ball that we have had the pleasure of offering. A stunning white ONL (Giles) ball with clean and clear stampings has been addressed by "Jackie" horizontally at a side panel underneath the sweet spot which was his favored place to address a ball. The signature is in blue and easily rates an 8/9 out of 10, a stellar example of one of the most prized of all single signed balls. LOA PSA/DNA (Full Letter)