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A CARDINAL CONNECTION
Sale of Busch relics draws plenty of smiles
By Jake Wagman
and David Hunn
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH Saturday, Nov. 26 2005
Cardinals slugger
Albert Pujols was the league's MVP. Pitcher Chris Carpenter
won the Cy Young. Now, local doctors are hauling another
piece of hardware out
of Busch Stadium.
Call it Reliever of the Year?
Among the hundreds of items on sale from the storied ballpark,
only one was flush with appeal for Dr. Courtney Shands and
colleagues: the hometeam urinal.
It is, after all, their specialty - Shands
and his associates are urologists.
"We figured anyone can get a chair, but who would want a urinal?" Shands
said.
Plenty of people actually. Shands' practice, Urology Consultants Ltd.,
paid
$2,173.82 for the urinal at an online memorabilia auction, the highest
of 26
bids, which began at $100.
They plan to put it in the patient bathroom
at their new office, to add some
levity to the otherwise humbling task of filling up a sample cup. |
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"For the next 30 years, people giving
a specimen in our office will have a
chuckle," said Shands, whose group has eight doctors who practice
in Missouri
and Illinois.
According to the auction guide, the "Royal Sloan USA" was
the players' urinal
in the Cardinals clubhouse. It's 19 inches wide by 26 inches tall
and comes
with a 12-inch chrome handle.
The urinal was part of $889,348 raised by the memorabilia auction.
Fans paid
hundreds and thousands of dollars for flags, pictures, balls and
bases from the
stadium. A 1949 photo of Stan Musial and Red Schoendienst at Ebbets
Field sold
for nearly $10,000. Manager Tony La Russa's desk went for $7,000.
The 1966
Busch Stadium dedication plaque fetched $21,042, more than any
other item.
"This was probably the best auction we've ever had," said Mike
Heffner,
president of the auction firm, Lelands.com. "And we've done
hundreds of
auctions. St. Louis fans were just incredible."
Though the auction closed last week, fans still hungry for Busch
Stadium relics
picked through leftovers at a weekend sale downtown.
Bargain hunters dressed in red arrived well before sunrise at "Fredbird's
Garage Sale" on Saturday at the America's Center. By 10 a.m.,
the line
stretched for a block down Washington Avenue.
Their bounty included $10 capsules of stadium dirt, signs for hot
dogs and
baby-changing stations and slices of the home dugout floor. Many
said it took
more than two hours to get in and out. They estimated longer waits
for those
arriving later.
"This is the only reason I came," said Ryan Rothe, 26, from Jerseyville,
holding up a baseball used in a come-from-behind victory against San Francisco
on Aug. 19. "It was a great game," said Rothe, who bought
the ball for $75 as a
Christmas present.
Profits from the sales will go toward the new ballpark. The garage
sale resumes
at 9 a.m. Sunday, but team officials cautioned that many of the
most sought
after items could already be gone - if there's anything left at
all.
And, no, there will not be another urinal for sale. Shands said
the idea to bid
on one came from a fellow urologist, Dr. David Keetch, when they
were
discussing ways to outfit a new main office in west St. Louis County.
"We were sitting there at a meeting, and he just had a mischievous
look on his
face," Shands said. |
