PITTSBURGH Big memorabilia sale nears

Items from former Pirate Roberto Clemente will highlight the sale Feb. 20-21.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- A physician's decades-long love affair with the Pittsburgh Pirates drove him to collect everything from autographed team balls to Green Weenies, those hotdog-shaped rattles that Bucco fans have used to shake the enemy's mojo since the 1960s.
Dr. Joseph Finegold's close ties to the team and its stars, notably Roberto Clemente, are the reason the longtime team doctor's collection should bring top dollar in the second day of a sports memorabilia sale run by Exton-based Hunt Auctions Inc. on Feb. 20-21.
"If these items come directly from the doctor's estate and there's documentation to it, it would have far greater value than in their second- or third-generation of being bought and sold," said Marty Appel, a former New York Yankees public relations man who now works as a memorabilia consultant. "People like to invest in things partly because of the story they can tell along with it."
History
David Hunt's company has sold sports items for 12 years, making headlines most recently with a sale of Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella's memorabilia. The Brooklyn Dodger's three Most Valuable Player awards from the 1950s brought $340,000 at an August auction.
This month's auction is lower key -- the top items are a bat used by Ty Cobb and a Babe Ruth-autographed ball now owned by private collectors, both of which Hunt expects to fetch up to $40,000.
Most of the auction's second day is built around two personal collections, Finegold's and Clem Labine's. Labine, a Florida retiree, was a Brooklyn Dodgers relief pitcher who, coincidentally, was traded to the Pirates in their World Series championship season of 1960.
Campanella's mitt
The centerpiece of Labine's collection is a game-worn mitt Campanella gave to Labine as a keepsake after the Dodgers' 1955 World Series victory. Hunt expects it's worth $15,000 to $20,000.
"What we like to see in our industry is first person or direct primary source. That is, the item is from the player or from somebody who knew them," Hunt said. "It's a matter of authenticity."
It's also why a batch of 49 picture postcards that Clemente threw away in 1956 are expected to sell for $3,500 to $4,500.
Clemente, a native Puerto Rican then in his second year with the Pirates, practiced his grammar when he'd respond to fan mail, according to Finegold's son, Stan, 49, who now lives in Lafayette Hill, near Philadelphia.
"But because Clemente's English was so broken up, he wasn't able to put into English what he wanted to say, so he threw (the postcards) in the garbage," Finegold said. Finegold compared the postcards to Michelangelo's Prisoners in Stone, which never got completed, adding that "my dad gathered them up."
Finegold's father was the team doctor from 1946 until 1979, and then worked two more years as a Pirates consultant. He died in 1995.
Hypochondriac
The doctor developed a special relationship with Clemente, whose preoccupation with his health was well-documented and, Stan Finegold would argue, misunderstood. Some say the Hall of Famer was a hypochondriac.
"One of the reasons he was so concerned about his body was that was how he made his living. He was a very serious guy and he was always very concerned about being able to provide for his family after baseball," Finegold said. "But, also, he was like a racehorse -- it was his body that made him special."
Clemente is also a thoroughbred in the memorabilia business. He died a hero's death Dec. 31, 1972, in an airplane crash on a charity mission to earthquake-ravaged Nicaragua. More important to collectors, however, is that Clemente died before the memorabilia business exploded a decade later.
"Anything from Roberto Clemente is much coveted by collectors because he died before this whole craze occurred," Appel said. "He never did card shows or mass signings and things like that."