Put me in coach! Landry's Fedora(!) part of October Sports Auction

Sept. 2, 2009

Posted by Noah

In the second episode of the eighth season of The Simpsons, "You Only Move Twice," Homer is offered a job at The Globex corporation, working for a seemingly benign boss, Hank Scorpio, in the bucolic little burg of Cypress Creek. It turns out Scorpio is bent on world domination, but that takes a backseat to Homer's problems concerning his family's homesickness for Springfield. In fact, I'm getting choked up thinking about it...

It's one of my favorite episodes for many reasons, not the least of which is that Homer manages to do what so many great supervillains have not managed to do in more than 40 years; that is, stop James Bond. "I stopped a a slacker at work today," Homer tells his dejected family.

What I really love this episode for, besides Albert Brooks' awesome voicing of Scorpio ("You have 72 hours to deliver the gold!") and remedial kid Gordy in Bart's class who is in the class for no other reason than he is Canadian and speaks with an accent (I'm laughing as I write this just thinking about it) is that Homer, in order to motivate his workers to get the nuclear reactor online in time reveals to Scorpio that he has always dreamed of coaching the Dallas Cowboys, and subsequently buys a Tom Landry signed fedora for use as a motivational tool. Hilarity ensues...

All of that is a long way to get to the fact that you can have your own Homer/Scorpio moment this fall as a Tom Landry game-worn fedora, sported regally on the sidelines of Texas stadium during the 1980s by the legendary Dallas Cowboys coach, will be up for auction as part of the Oct. 1-2 Signature® Sports Memorabilia Auction.

The hat is just part of an impressive trove of Cowboys' memorabilia that will certainly have die-hards of America's Team keenly attuned to the early October event at Heritage's Uptown Dallas headquarters. Tom Landry represents everything hallowed about the glory days of the 1970s Cowboys and there was no symbol more emblematic of those amazing '70s teams than Landry's iconic fedora.

Along with Coach Landry's stylish 7-3/8s Churchill, Ltd. Gray hat, Heritage will also be offering a 1970s-era Coach Landry game-used clipboard complete with handwritten plays and coaching whistle, making a complete suite of game-used Landry memorabilia and an enticing grouping for any coach or fan aspiring to the greatness achieved by Dallas's favorite head coach.

A game-used jersey worn by Roger Staubach and an early 1990s game-used uniform from Troy Aikman - easily the two most-beloved Dallas Cowboy quarterbacks - are being offered in compliment to the Landry lots, and will be yet another reason for Cowboy fans to keep a close eye on the early October auction.

The Staubach jersey is from the early '70s. It's a version of the dark blue uniform worn by the cowboys mostly as road-jerseys during that part of the decade. My mother always insisted that the Cowboys would lose when they wore those jerseys, and I don't remember her being wrong. Ever. Since the dark blue jerseys were worn with much less frequency than the home white there is much less wear and tear on this shirt than you might otherwise find, which makes it all the more desirable.

Troy Aikman's circa 1992 game-used uniform comes to Heritage in fantastic shape and is a hard-to-find relic from the beginning of the 1990s Cowboy dynasty, of which Aikman was arguably the biggest part. Aikman may well be the one Cowboy player able to rival Staubach in terms of fan adoration. This uniform bears the battle scars of those intense 1990s-era battles that saw the team dominate like no other.

Yes, you too can own a Landry hat and motivate your employees like Homer did. If, by wearing it, you can help your employer take over the world, then good for you! You'll probably benefit greatly from your actions, though I can't guarantee that you'll be given - as Scorpio rewarded Homer - the Denver Broncos. I can guarantee, however, that, just like Homer, you'll be equally disappointed it's not the Cowboys...

Marge: I think the Denver Broncos are pretty good...

Homer: Oh... You don't understand.

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-Noah Fleisher

Getting with the Program: A Golf Latecomer's Take on the First Masters

July 8, 2009
Posted by John Dale

I’ve enjoyed watching sports all my life, though my attempts to actually play said sports outside intramural competition ended in sixth grade, when I acquired costochondritis on the cross-country course and compiled an 0-6 record in wrestling. Unsurprisingly for an Indiana kid, basketball excited me most, but I also enjoyed watching football, baseball, and the occasional potluck pick from "sports rarely seen outside the gymnasium or the Olympics." Golf was more take-it-or-leave-it; compared to the constant motion and energy of basketball, the comparatively staid golf broadcasts rarely held my 7-year-old or even 10-year-old interest.

That changed for me on April 13, 1997, a date golf fans know well for the final round of the 1997 Masters; after a decent first round on Thursday and two utterly brilliant rounds on Friday and Saturday, a 21-year-old Tiger Woods had all but put on his first green jacket. There was an excitement around golf and Tiger, an energy I hadn’t seen before in the galleries. The announcers were talking about “the future of golf,” and looking back on the past dozen years from the perspective of 2009, that future has come true in ways few could have dreamed of.

Certainly, the phenomenon of Tiger Woods could not have approached the mind of Bobby Jones on the eve of the “First Augusta National Invitation” Tournament, an event now universally recognized as the first instance of The Masters. Horton Smith won that first event, as well as the third in 1936. Many traditions have sprung up around The Masters, but one that has not survived is the official program; it was produced in 1934 and 1935 but then discontinued. Examples of the 1934 program, like this recent discovery in our upcoming September Signature Sports Memorabilia Auction, number only about a dozen, and whenever they come up for auction, the passion golf fans have for their sport—a passion that often confines itself to light clapping on the course—can come alive.

To be sure, the condition of this program isn’t perfect; like all pieces of paper ephemera, this program was meant to be used and then kept as a souvenir or disposed of as the owner pleased. The cataloger notes “moderate cover wear, including splitting at the spine,” but elsewhere, there is nothing but praise for the program; the staples are firmly attached to the pages, and the interior quality is remarkable; comparing the white inside pages with the back cover is quite the revelation. (Speaking of which…how about that advertisement on the back cover? It’s the “Monroe Adding-Calculator,” complete with 1930s office girl and potshots at FDR’s New Deal labor reforms. It definitely hits my threshold for retro-cool.)

Beyond rarity or condition, though, it’s simply awesome to imagine where this program might have been, what shots it might have seen as it was held by an unknown spectator in the gallery as the crack of persimmon-wood drivers sent balls sailing through the air.

-John Dale Beety