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Everybody in life seems to collect "stuff."
During my 53 years in Babe Ruth baseball, I have collected a lot of memorabilia (stuff),
When, my Babe Ruth career is over, the Kishacoquillas Valley Historical Society (in Allensville) has been gracious enough to agree to take the Babe Ruth collection.
The Mifflin County league has become one of the most historical in Pennsylvania. During the last 68 years it has become the standard bearer for the state as it has won 25 state championships, been to 50 state finals, advance to 30 Mid-Atlantic regionals, gone to five World Series and has had a national champion and two other national fianlists.
I have tried to save everything, I can about the league during my 53 years, good and bad.
One thing, I learned from going to presidential sites is don't throw anything away. People like to look at everything.
Some of the stuff in my collection includes Mifflin County Babe Ruth Christmas balls and masks from 2020 with Mifflin County Babe Ruth written on them.
All 25 of the state championship teams have a book with all their clippings including the 1960 team. Since I came into the league in 1970, I went to the state library in Harrisburg and Xeroxed Sentinel copies to make a book for the league's first state championship.
The five World Series teams, obviously, have a lot of items from their trips to the postseason. We have two signed World Series programs from the Pennsylvania governors from the 2002 and 2016 teams.
Here is an example of two items that I kept from the 2016 13-year-old national championship team.
After Mifflin County won the district and state tournament games all by 10-run margins, the first game in the regional in Queensbury, New York was a lot tougher.
There was no place for the press to sit, so I tried to sit on a vehicle that was used to take care of the field. I had a pair of white pants on and after the game, I realized that I had grease on my pants,
Mifflin County won the game in extra innings as Brian Yetter had a 14-strikeout game and Colby Bodtorf came in to get the save. Mifflin County won in eight innings.
After the game, Jaxon Pupo said, "Hey Ray you have to keep wearing those pants for the rest of the tournament."
And so I did.
Now the pants and the sweater are part of the collection.
Before the team left for Iowa (where the World Series was held that year), they had a booth at the Belleville Fireman's Festival to raise money for the trip. While there, the team won a huge stuffed teddy bear. The team took it to Iowa for good luck.
A couple of years later, I received a phone call from one of the local radio stations saying we have a big bear in here and we think its yours, meaning the Babe Ruth team's.
The bear now sits down in my basement with the archives.
Here is an another example of a piece of memorabilia that I picked up during my World Series trips. As most people know I have gone to four of the five World Series on the train. One day, I was out shopping and I ran into an American Flyer (toy train) box car that was Royal Blue and White (the league colors). The box car was from the days of "Great Northern Line" which is one that I took by Amtrak to the World Series in Longview, Washington in 2004 and 2018.
Hopefully, there will be a lot more stories to tell and a lot more memorabilia to get in years and seasons to come.
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Ray Wilde covers Babe Ruth baseball for The Sentinel.