Gavvy Cravath Single Signed Official National League Baseball Beckett COA RARE
$14,995.00
Presented is an official National League Ford Frick baseball signed by former Major League outfielder Gavvy Cravath. Cravath—born Clifford Carlton Cravath—swatted 119 career home runs over a 11-year span, primarily with the Philadelphia Phillies, leading the senior circuit in round-trippers on six different occasions. Cravath has penned his flowing signature in black ink across the baseball's sweet spot, adding a date of "5-18-51." The baseball comes with an LOA from Beckett for signature. This is possible the only Cravath single signed baseball on earth.
Clifford Carlton "Gavvy" Cravath (March 23, 1881 – May 23, 1963), also nicknamed "Cactus", was an American right fielder and right-handed batter in Major League Baseball who played primarily for the Philadelphia Phillies. One of the sport's most prolific power hitters of the dead-ball era, in the eight years from 1913 to 1920 he led the National League in home runs six times, in runs batted in, total bases and slugging percentage twice each, and in hits, runs and walks once each. Cravath is almost certainly the first player to hit 200 home runs in affiliated baseball -- 119 in the majors, 107 in the minors and seven in the 1903 "independent" Pacific Coast League. He led the NL in several offensive categories in 1915 as the Phillies won the first pennant in the team's 33-year history, and he held the team's career home run record from 1917 to 1924. He is one of eight players to lead the majors in home runs for a season six times in a career. However, he played his home games at Baker Bowl, a park that was notoriously favorable to batting statistics. Cravath hit 92 career homers at Baker Bowl while he had 25 homers in all his games away from home. Moreover, he was an exceptionally slow base runner; so much so, in fact, that it was actually Cravath about whom sportswriter Bugs Baer famously wrote, "His head was sure full of larceny, but his feet were honest," a distinction which, along with Cravath's extreme lack of foot speed, has long been mistakenly ascribed to Ping Bodie.
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