Mark the day Koufax and Drysdale played Rancho Park
Be careful what you use as a bookmark, warns Richard Davies, writing a piece for the online used book seller AbeBooks.com (linked here).
Book store owners have found all kinds of things when given boxes for sale or donations. Dollar bills. A Mickey Mantle rookie baseball card. A marriage certificate from 1879.
And a golf scorecard signed by Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax.
Fred Dorsett (linked here), a bookseller in Lancaster via Texas (linked here), was the one who made that find, and contributed the note about it to Davies' story.
When we contacted Dorsett for more information, he gave us this:
"I was at a flea market and bought a book on golf for a friend. I had had it for a week or two and picked it up to take to my friend when the scorecard fell out. I hadn't noticed the card when I bought the book and idly glanced at it, immediately noticing the names, but attached no significance to them as they had been hand printed.
"It was only when I turned the card over that I had that BINGO! moment upon seeing the actual signatures. I gave the book to my friend (no, I didn't tell him) and sold the card to an acquaintance who was and still is a diehard Dodger fan. Made a nice little profit since I paid $1.00 for the book and got consideably more than that for the signatures.
"This all took place 12-15 years ago. I'm not sure of the book's name, but I think it was by Sam Snead. I think the golf course was Rancho Park. I can't ask my friend since he passed away a few years ago.
"I've come across several similar mysteries like that involving other books. Like: How did a book from a library in Maine, checked out in 1942, wind up on the West Coast in a box of books in Lancaster in 2011? The library still exists and I returned the book, but the records of who checked it out no longer exist.
"Or, how did the book 'A Cellarfull of Noise' by the Beatles' former manager Brian Epstein -- and signed by him -- happen to show up in the back of a church pew where hymnals are placed in a little town in Kansas?
"This is the kind of thing that drives me nuts, but is also addictively intriguing."
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