Dodger Owner Buys Reese’s Ring to Build Bridge to Brooklyn Era

A $400,000 windfall normally doesn’t evoke regret. For Mark Reese, though, the sale at auction Thursday of 57 memorabilia items passed down from his Hall of Fame father, Pee Wee Reese, was bittersweet.

And parting with the Dodger shortstop’s 1955 World Series championship ring was especially painful.

“That ring never left my father’s hand until the end of his life,” Reese said. “It always reminded me of the hand it graced.”

Thanks to Dodger owner Frank McCourt, the ring didn’t leave the Dodger family. McCourt’s son, Travis, was at Sotheby’s in New York and, in auction lingo, “knocked down” the ring, bidding $72,000.

McCourt acquired several other items, all of which will be showcased when the Dodgers celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1955 title next season. Brooklyn Dodger memorabilia will be displayed at Dodger Stadium.

“This franchise really is a civic treasure and a public asset in many ways,” Frank McCourt said.

“We had an opportunity to acquire important pieces that people will enjoy looking at and will bring back memories of the 1955 team.”

Displayed alongside the ring will be a silver platter engraved with the signatures of Reese’s 1955 teammates that was presented to him on his birthday that year, a framed team photo, and warm-up jackets worn by Reese, who died in 1999, and teammate Billy Loes.

The auction gained widespread attention because the bat Babe Ruth used to hit the first home run at Yankee Stadium sold for $1.26 million.

Several other items fetched more than $100,000, including the glove worn by Dodger pitcher Sandy Koufax during his 1963 no-hitter.

The glove tempted McCourt, but he decided to focus on items closely associated with the 1955 team. The only time he allowed Travis to deviate from that approach was to buy, for $5,462, a panoramic photograph of opening day between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Braves in 1911. McCourt’s grandfather, Francis, was a part-owner of the Braves.

McCourt, a fourth-generation Boston native, passed on a 1916 Dodgers vs. Red Sox World Series program and a Boston Red Stockings cigar label display, circa 1880s. In all, he spent a little more than $100,000.

“Travis was going to buy the one that in his judgment was the best item that illustrated the connection between Brooklyn and Boston,” McCourt said. “We didn’t want to overdo that. It was kind of a fun thing.”

McCourt has long-range plans to create a Dodger museum and would like to add to his memorabilia collection.

“Coming from a family business, fourth generation, I ride on a lot of shoulders,” he said. “To be the steward of the Dodgers, I’m just so enamored with the history of this franchise. It is so, so important to share that with people.

“We want to keep as much of this as possible in the public domain. It’s the layers of history that make this such a powerful and important sports franchise. It’s important to preserve as much of that as we can.”

Collecting memorabilia can be difficult and expensive. Former Dodger owner Peter O’Malley has a substantial collection of archive material, but the only Brooklyn Dodger museum is in a small room at the Coney Island Stadium where the Class-A Brooklyn Cyclones play.

A year ago, the estate of Hall of Fame Dodger catcher Roy Campanella auctioned 80 items for more than $600,000, including his three National League Most Valuable Player plaques; the 1955 award sold for $99,000. The Dodgers, then owned by Fox, showed no interest in purchasing the items.

Mark Reese, a documentary filmmaker and writer, said he was grateful that McCourt was taking a different approach. He didn’t know who bought the ring until Dodger publicist John Olguin called him Thursday.

“It was an emotional day, and I was thinking that maybe I didn’t need to know who bought it,” Reese said. “Now I know that a lot of people will enjoy it. This is the perfect scenario.”