GRIMES, Iowa — PBS selected a Grimes woman to be featured in a new episode of the station's show: "Antiques Roadshow" after she learned the estimated value of a baseball legend's bat she almost sold for $1 at a garage sale in 2012.
Sue McEntee said an antique collector had came to her family's garage sale before the family had moved to Grimes, and asked her if she noticed anything different about the wooden bat listed for '$1' next to the other metal bats her sons used to play with.
McEntee said she didn't notice anything in particular, so the man asked her for a pencil, and then started to rub the bat. What happened next? Well, the name of Jackie Robinson, Major League Baseball's first Black player, appeared on the barrel of the bat.
He told McEntee she should lock the bat up "where no one could find it." At that moment, McEntee decided to take the listing off the baseball bat at her garage sale.
Fast forward to June 2024, McEntee brought the bat to "Antiques Roadshow", and learned she had been picked to be featured on a future episode that will air after January, she said.
An appraiser also estimated the value of the bat she had kept in her basement for years: between $15- and $20,000.
"I thought, 'Oh my gosh, here it was going to be a buck, and now it's $15- to $20,000," McEntee told Local 5 News on Friday. She added that if cleaned and sent to get substantiated, the baseball bat could be valued at more than $100,000.
"Seriously, had [the antique collector] not picked that up that day, someone would have bought [the bat] for $1, or I would've given it to Goodwill," McEntee suggested.
McEntee said she received the baseball bat from her mother when entering college, and said her mother received it from McEntee's uncle: Joe Hatten.
Hatten had played with Jackie Robinson on the Brooklyn Dodgers back in the late '40s, and McEntee said she heard stories from her mother and aunt that the teammates would often room together.
Now knowing the estimated value of the bat, McEntee said she has no desire to sell the bat because "it's something that belongs to our family."