Homes & Interiors
At what point does a mere interest evolve into a formal collection? When it gets its own room.
When Anne and Dick Ragsdale moved into their Northumberland home 13 years ago, they split the responsibility for decorating the interior: she took the ground floor and second story, while Dick took over the lower level. The difference between the two areas is as clear cut as the baselines at Yankee Stadium. While Anne’s upper floors showcase a refined sense of interior design, Dick’s basement is a Field of Dreams, dedicated to the display of all things baseball. In his personal hall of fame, there is everything from several hundred signed baseballs (many with corresponding baseball cards of the signers), framed and signed photos, newspaper articles, magazine covers, books, bats, gloves, an announcer’s microphone, used tickets, programs, autographed jerseys, a bronze statue of a young ballplayer and a baseball pinball machine. At the foot of the freestanding staircase stands a green wooden seat with the number 1 painted in white on the back rest, a souvenir from the famed Polo Grounds ballpark in Harlem, home to the N.Y. Giants from 1911 until 1957. The seat is signed by Hall of Famer and baseball legend Willie Mays, who owned centerfield at the Polo Grounds when he played there from 1951-57. “That was a gift from my wife,” Ragsdale says proudly.
Though the seat is a jewel in the crown of this collection, its genesis was quite humble. “My mother was raised in St. Louis, and went to school with Stan Musial,” he explains, citing the Hall of Famer who played more than 20 years for the Cardinals. “We often went to visit my grandfather there, and when I was just a little tyke, he took me to a restaurant Stan Musial owned. My grandpa got me a drink and it had swizzle sticks with Stan Musial’s name on them that I saved.”
Walls of Fame Dick Ragsdale’s collection of baseball memorabilia. photo: Eric England
Raised in Cincinnati, home of baseball’s first pro team, the Red Stockings, Ragsdale divided his loyalty between the Cardinals and the Reds. “I played Little League baseball when I was a kid, and once a summer, the Reds invited Little League teams to come to a game, and we were allowed to go out onto Crosley Field. It was awesome as a little boy to stand on that great big field with the big leaguers. When no one was looking, I would reach down and pull up a hunk of grass to put in my pocket.”
By the time he got to high school, his skills were no longer competitive, but he followed the Reds on the radio, hooked by announcer and Hall of Fame pitcher Waite Hoyt. “I used to listen on a small radio my father had given me. I loved rainouts because then Hoyt would fill the time with stories.” In college, Ragsdale’s interest in baseball waned, but later, as he was building a career in health care, he rediscovered his old flame. “I was traveling quite a bit and as a way to unwind, I started visiting memorabilia stores. Practically every city has them. Baseball items were always a big part of memorabilia collections, and I just got hooked on it again.”
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Ragsdale’s collection fills two rooms and a hallway. It is not arranged in chronological order, though he can easily locate the oldest items: a baseball signed by Babe Ruth and another by members of the Gashouse Gang, the moniker applied to the St. Louis Cardinals’ 1934 team, Dizzy Dean among them.
Baseball fans could easily spend hours at this private gallery, unearthing souvenirs both obvious and obscure. There’s editorial coverage of Dave Winfield’s 3000th hit in 1993, as well as a ticket to the game where it took place. There is a Life magazine cover of Willie Mays riding in the back of a convertible in a ticker-tape parade. There are bats signed by World Series champion teams and signed baseballs that would complement Cooperstown. (The secret to preserving signed balls, says Ragsdale, is using a good pen; he has insisted on Sharpies ever since pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee passed along the tip.)
And then there are baseball cards, photos and even a uniform from a player virtually unknown: Dick Ragsdale. “Anne gave me a trip to a baseball fantasy camp for Christmas, and the first one I went to was a Red Sox camp in 1990. I admit, I was scared to death. I thought I was just going to make a fool of myself. But the coaches and players are great. They really work with you. I was especially nervous about pop-ups, that I would get hit in the face trying to make a catch. But one day I was playing shortstop, and one came my way. I danced around and around, and I caught it. I was so excited! It was like playing Little League again.”
photo: Eric England
Big game room
Susan and Robert Falk’s collection is at once real and surreal. The couple and their grown children, Vanessa and Troy, are avid hunters, fishermen and avowed conservationists. Their magnificent Belle Meade Boulevard home—a reproduction of a “cottage” in Newport, R.I., which is in turn a reproduction of an estate in France—is the epitome of understated elegance. But it is the second-story trophy room that reveals their passion. Here are mounted elk heads from New Mexico, rams from Texas, pheasants from South Dakota and bear from Canada. Those prizes represent the more conventional items in the collection. When the Falks began to hunt in Africa, their trophies became far more exotic. A scimitar-horned onyx, a wildebeast, a sable, a kudu, a black buck and a supremely unattractive wart hog adorn the walls of the trophy room.
“In America, we have deer, elk, pheasant, duck. In Africa, you have everything, animals you’ve never heard of,” explains Robert Falk, whose love of the outdoors began as a child fishing in a lake near his home in Illinois. The couple met when Bob, a flight instructor at the time, gave Susan flying lessons; they have been married for 33 years. She says she took up hunting because it was something they could do as a couple. “If he was a golfer, I might have done that, but he is a hunter, and he likes to shoot. As it turns out, so do I. I enjoy skeet shooting as well as hunting. When Vanessa was at Harpeth Hall, I started a skeet shooting club for the girls who were interested.”
The inauspicious seed of their collection is in the pool room adjoining the trophy room: two full-body mounts of small deer, the results of their son and daughter’s first Juvenile Season hunts. The family began hunting together for the same reason Bob and Susan did—it is something they can do together.
Their first trip to Africa was in 1997. They stay on a private 25,000-hectare ranch (about 50,000 acres) in Harare, Zimbabwe. “Twenty-six families live on the ranch, and all the game that is killed there goes for their food and clothing,” says Susan. The family takes one big hunting trip a year, usually lasting a month. They spend two weeks in the bush, and the remaining time in more luxurious accommodations in Africa’s cosmopolitan cities. In addition to the trophies, they have large photo albums chronicling their excursions. They also go deep-sea fishing in the Caribbean, something Vanessa in particular prefers, and there are numerous photos of the small-framed young woman wrestling marlin that outweigh her by hundreds of pounds. The fish are displayed in their Florida home.
photo: Eric England
Last spring, the Falks went duck hunting in Argentina, and those mounts are just now being completed. “I’m not sure where we are going to put those,” says Susan, looking around the trophy room. “We are running out of space.”
She voices the challenge frequently faced by serious collectors. At what point does a collection become a museum?