November 18, 2021: Fall Auction
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 11/18/2021
This is an intriguing piece from a truly tough hobby autograph and a member of the 1919 Chicago White Sox club that would be charged with throwing the World Series that year, though Frank Shellenback was no longer on the team by that time. A spitballer who had achieved some success with the Sox in 1918-19, his major-league career ended with the spitball ban that went into place in 1920; he never pitched in the majors again and instead shuffled off to the Pacific Coast League for nearly two decades. There he would win a record 295 games and wind up in the PCL Hall of Fame. After hanging it up he became a minor-league manager, scout and eventually a major-league pitching coach, which was the subject of this letter that boasts an elegant Shellenback autograph in ballpoint. Dated Nov. 1, 1945, Shellenback was asking for a job reference from Jack Zellers, a Detroit Tigers executive for the pitching coach job with the big club. It must have worked: Shellenback, who had previously been the pitching coach for the Browns and the Red Sox (1940-44), got the job in Detroit in 1946. The letter, with mild folds, is in essentially Near-Mint condition. Basic COA from BAS.
1945 Frank Shellenback Letter Seeking Job Reference (BAS)
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