Years ago, George Stalle owned a piece of the Braves. True, it was the Milwaukee Braves, and it was a long time ago. But recently Stalle wondered whether he might somehow still have a stake in the goings-on at Turner Field, just like current team owner, Liberty Media.
He has a stock certificate, emblazoned with the familiar warrior head logo and dated April 4, 1963, from Milwaukee Braves Inc., which certified that Stalle, then a boy living in Oconomowoc, Wis., and now a 58-year-old music teacher living in New Jersey, was the owner of one share in baseball’s oldest continuously operating franchise.
The stock came as a Christmas gift in 1963 from a father to a boy who worshiped the team of his youth and its stars such as Henry Aaron, Eddie Matthews and Warren Spahn. Forty-eight years later, gazing at the long tucked-away document, a fantasy struck. He’d never sold back his share when the club owners asked him to. Maybe he was still an owner.
“I guess I hold the somewhat quixotic notion that, ‘Well, I never agreed to sell them my share, so by rights it transfers and I’m now a part owner of the Atlanta Braves,’” he mused. “Probably not true, but maybe true.”
Probably not.
Just how Stalle (and some 800 other Wisconsinites) came to own a share in the Braves is best explained by Bill Bartholomay, the Chicago businessman who led the group that bought the club when it played in Milwaukee from a Boston business owner who held it from the time the franchise played as the Boston Braves.
“We thought it would be a good idea to sell some shares to Wisconsin residents to get some local ownership,” Bartholomay said this week. “That was the only reason for it.”
The former ownership group, Bartholomay noted, had been criticized for being an absentee owner. About 10 percent of the total shares in the club were sold to people in the state, with most of the buyers purchasing only a share or two.
The person who bought the most shares? Bud Selig, now major league baseball commissioner, Bartholomay said.
Years later, in 1974, Bartholomay’s group, the Atlanta/La Salle Corp., offered to buy back all outstanding shares at a per share price of $24.19, according to documents. The vast majority sold. Some, including Stalle, did not.
“I had it tucked away in a box in the basement, like other things from childhood,” he said. “But I’ve always been sort of curious about it.”
Occasionally, his curiosity moved him to write to the Braves and ask about the stock value. In 2002, he received a letter from the club offering no opinion, but noting that Milwaukee Braves Inc. no longer existed.
A few weeks ago, his curiosity got to him again. This time, he decided to take a different approach to the question of the certificate’s worth. A former marketing and promotions man, Stalle asked if the club would be interested in his donating the certificate so that it could be auctioned off annually to an honorary owner of the Braves.
All proceeds could go to Braves Charities.
“Then something good could come of it,” said Stalle, adding that a Braves official who he contacted said the club would get back to him on his idea.
The Baseball Hall of Fame is interested in Stalle’s certificate. Tim Wiles, the director of research, said he would like it for the Hall’s library, though not for display on a museum wall.
Meanwhile, Stalle can comfort himself with the realization that, even if he does not own a piece of a business worth a half-billion dollars or more, he does possess a piece of paper with a memorabilia value estimated at between $400 to $800, according to Bob Kerstein, owner of Scripophily.com, a hobby firm that deals in stock and bond certificates.
“It’s a great collectible,” Kerstein said.
For Stalle, of course, it’s a bit more personal than that.
“I’d like to think,” he said, “that I’ve got a little piece of history here.”
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