There may be few experiences in sports as terrifying as stepping into a batter’s box against a top major league pitcher. Fast balls are a blur and sliders snap like a bull whip, both popping so loudly in a catcher’s mitt that they can be heard on radio broadcasts. It’s a very dangerous business. Ninety five years ago, on August 16th, Ray Chapman, the Cleveland Indians solid and speedy shortstop, came to the plate for the last time in the fifth inning.

Carl Mays, a surly spit baller and notorious head-hunter starting for the Yankees on that fateful day, was doing a slow burn because he thought Chapman was crowding the plate. Even if it had not been twilight, any batter would have had trouble tracking the ball. Writes Allan Wood on SABR, “he sometimes scraped his knuckles on the ground while delivering the ball, ‘Mays looked ‘like a cross between an octopus and a bowler,’ Baseball Magazine observed in 1918. ‘He shoots the ball in at the batter at such unexpected angles that his delivery is hard to find, generally, until along about 5 o’clock, when the hitters get accustomed to it—and when the game is about over.’”

Mays unorthodox submarine delivery and reputation as a head-hunter must have frightened batters.

Mays uncorked a pitch that struck Chapman in the temple. Mistaking the crack of Chapman’s scull for the crack of his bat, Mays fielded the ball and threw it to first base. Blood gushed from Chapman’s left ear as he stumbled trying to reach first. While teammates and opponents raced on the field to his rescue, Mays stayed anchored to the mound. Despite an hour-long surgery in which doctors removed part of Chapman’s scull, he died 12 hours later; thus becoming the only major league player ever to die from an injury on the field.

My longtime friend and baseball memorabilia collector, (mostly of gloves and mitts he buys and sells on his website)), Art Katsapis, is selling an extremely rare baseball signed by Carl Mays through Heritage Auctions.  His artifact casts light on a fascinating episode in baseball history and the evolution of collecting in recent years

Katsapis bought the autographed baseball from the original owner, a neighbor of Mays who dated it for him. This is believed to be the only baseball Mays signed during his playing days. (Credit: Heritage)

The ball was inscribed “To Robert Huntington by Carl W. Mays Nov. 30th, 1931,” around the time he was trying to extend his professional career, kicking around Portland, Oregon and other minor league towns. Mark Jordon, one of Heritage’s autograph experts, told Katsapis that he had seen more recent balls which Mays had signed in retirement in the 1960s, but this was the first ball dating back to his playing days.

Twenty years ago, after Katsapis moved to Portland from Philadelphia, he was at an estate sale in a pretty, old neighborhood in the city’s Northeast section called Laurelhurst. Katsapis bought a vintage leather basketball with big laces for two dollars which he later sold to a dealer for $75. “It took a lot of courage because it doesn’t come easily for me, but I asked the old gentleman there if he had any other sports stuff, especially baseball,” Katsapis says. “He said ‘hmmm. I think I have an old signed baseball.’ I asked who and he said a fellow named Mays, ‘I think.”