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The stuff of legends

Marshall Fogel with one of his several racks of Louisville Slugger bats

It’s accurate to call Marshall Fogel a collector, but hardly sufficient.

His collection of baseball memorabilia is nothing less than legendary, said to be second only to that of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.

Nor does the word “collector” come close to covering the bases — pun fully intended — of the many other facets of this modern Renaissance man’s life.

When he isn’t chasing yet another precious baseball artifact, or sharing his extensive expertise on baseballiana, Fogel might be playing cowboy, herding cattle somewhere in Wyoming atop his horse; delving into historical secrets of the Denver Jewish community; slogging, M-16 in hand, through the arduous boot camp of the Israeli army; raising money for Denver charities; perhaps mastering a new flamenco piece on his classical guitar.

He might, occasionally, even revisit his lifelong career as an attorney, taking on a case here and there, or advising state legislators on such topics as post-traumatic stress disorder, police matters or hepatitis C — areas in which his legal knowledge is considerable.

Obviously, a man of many interests.

At 73, he seems fit and energetic, his wit sharp, his conversational skills and range of knowledge vast and eclectic, which is putting it mildly.

Some people think of him as an eccentric, Fogel says, basing that description on the amazing range of his interests, some of which are unusual, and the intellectual depth he applies to those interests.

He’s not sure that he disagrees with them, nor — in the classic style of true eccentrics — does he particularly care.

“You find peace with yourself by looking at life as a ladder,” he says. “The ladder has a lot of steps up and a lot of steps down. So doesn’t it make sense that as long as you’re alive and you have your health and will to learn, that you climb as high as you can on the ladder?”

Fogel, born in Denver, grew up in Park Hill and Hilltop. The father of three spent his youthful years at BMH and Beth Joseph. He is a member of Temple Sinai these days.

Educated at East High, CU and DU, he has always loved the law and has always been a lawyer.

Still of special counsel with Burg Simpson, his career has included practice as both prosecutor and defender. A former Denver deputy district attorney who prosecuted many cases, including homicides, he was the first lawyer to teach at the Denver Police Academy and co-authored the Miranda Warnings when they became mandatory in Colorado in the 1960s.

In private practice, he specialized in criminal and administrative law, personal injury and a host of issues affecting Denver police and fire employees.

Practicing law from both sides of the courtroom reflects the universal nature of Fogel’s personality.

“I enjoyed both because it gave me an opportunity to really deal with the Constitution and protection of people, from both sides.

“The apex of it all is that you have to respect the Constitution and the rights of people, both the public and those who get in trouble.”

Despite the energy he has long spent on his profession, Fogel has always managed to find time for baseball. He played it as a kid on the East Side, mostly as a catcher in city youth leagues.

“I wasn’t a very good player,” he admits. “I was average.”

But he always loved the sport, especially the major leagues and more especially, the New York Yankees. Fogel’s love for the Bronx Bombers — to this day the focal point of his collection — seems to know no bounds.

“It is the Yankees,” he says, as if that explains it all.

“It is Ruth, it is Gehrig, it is DiMaggio, it is Mantle, it is Jeter. They are the best. They are the lightning rod of sports, no matter if they’re popular or not popular. When they’re in the World Series, everybody watches it. They’re the stars in heaven.”

As a kid, “I dreamed about playing for the Yankees,” he says. “The Denver Bears were a farm club of the Yankees then. We used to turn on the radio on Saturday and listen to the major league ballgames.”

He saw any number of future Yankees start their careers as Denver Bears, when they played at the old Merchants Park and the original Bears Stadium, long-gone Denver baseball fields in which Fogel spent a lot of youthful summer hours.

“I remember when Bears Stadium seated 10,000 people,” Fogel says. “My dad took me there for the opening game. I always liked going with my father.”

Not surprisingly, the baseball-infatuated youth started collecting early on. He began with cards, buying them at a place called Candy Land at 23rd and Krameria.

“Every kid did that in those days. We loved to collect and trade. That sparked my interest, as well as the game itself.”

He fondly remembers the first baseball card he ever owned, a 1952 Topps Bill Dickey. He still has it, battered and not very valuable — in monetary terms at least — a relic of his original collection.

The reason he still has it is that unlike most kids who collected baseball cards — whose shared sob story usually involves mothers tossing out their collections while cleaning the basement or attic — Fogel was a careful and fastidious collector from the start.

“My mother didn’t throw them out,” Fogel says, “and the reason is that she couldn’t find them. I had hidden them away.”

As he raised a family and pursued his career, Fogel’s interest in baseball collecting was relatively muted. He considers 1989 the starting point of what might well be the best private collection of baseball memorabilia in the world.

He went to a sports convention in Chicago that year. It was just as the mania of baseball collecting was beginning to catch on in a big way, when the Internet was starting to spread the word, when the value of such things as old uniforms, mitts, bats and assorted ephemera was beginning to point seriously skyward.

“It was the beginning of the conversion from being a hobby into collecting not only for enjoyment but for added value.”

That point was driven home in 1991, Fogel says, when a private collection went up for auction at the prestigious Sotheby’s auction house in New York. The collection sold for more than $4 million, thrusting baseball memorabilia into the major leagues.

“That was the launch pad for the collectible industry, particularly baseball, to really become an investment.”

It was also the perfect time for an aspiring collector like Fogel to get in on the game. Prices were rapidly rising but had yet to reach the astronomical levels they have reached today. There was less competition from other knowledgeable collectors. There were opportunities to obtain treasures at entry level prices.

It might seem ridiculous to use the term “entry level” to describe the $121,000 that Fogel successfully bid in 1996 for a “best of the best” specimen of the coveted 1952 Mickey Mantle card, but he has since been offered seven figures for it.

“That’s about as far as I was willing to go,” he says of that bid, the highest he has offered for anything at an auction, “and it was scary.”

It’s not scary anymore.

“They used to call me stupid,” Fogel says with a laugh, “and now I’m wisely eccentric.”

That 1952 Mantle remains one of the crown jewels in Fogel’s collection which includes an amazingly broad range of memorabilia. He specializes not only in game-played bats, original photographs, autographed balls, cards, mitts and uniforms, but all sorts of things related to baseball — medals, promotional items such as watches and cigarette holders, advertisements and game tickets.

He owns, for example, a full (that is, not torn hence never used) ticket to the first game of the 1919 World Series during which the infamous Black Sox scandal, involving “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, emerged.

“This,” Fogel understates, “is really rare.”

It is only one of the many Holy Grails in Fogel’s collection today, so many that he simply cannot single out any one item as the “best.”

“I have a lot of Holy Grails,” he says.

“I’ve got Lou Gehrig’s last bat. I’ve got Babe Ruth’s handprint, the ’52 Topps card for Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams’ uniform, Sandy Koufax’s glove and uniform, Roy Campanella’s glove, Hank Aaron’s glove, Willy Mays’ glove, Roberto Clemente’s bat and glove, Ty Cobb’s bat.”

Even that formidable list is just the beginning.

Fogel knows that writers and collectors have described his collection, ensconced with sophisticated electronic security in his Denver home, as the best outside of Cooperstown, but he refuses to make that claim himself.

“Owners always take pride in what they have, but it’s better that other people feel that way,” he says.

Fogel says he cannot accurately place a monetary value on the collection. Such memorabilia, he says, is worth no more than what buyers are willing to pay, but he acknowledges the obvious: It is valuable.

“It features some of the most important baseball artifacts,” is how he puts it. “I think I have a very great collection.”

It is so good, in fact, that the Denver Art Museum has exhibited important components of it, and a significant portion of its beloved Yankees section is currently reposing, on loan, in the new Yankee Stadium, where the team keeps a museum.

The kid who once dreamed of being a Yankee, in other words, was approached by the Yankees themselves, eager to illustrate their own history with Fogel’s treasures.

One contemplates the artifacts in Fogel’s collection, the things that baseball’s legends wore or signed, batted or caught with, and wonders whether the ghosts of those legends — ala “Field of Dreams” — sometimes wander about the collector’s house at night.

Fogel, who loves baseball’s mystical nature but places firm limits upon his imagination, laughs at the notion.

“If that happens,” he says, “I’m going to Shalom Park.”

When one reaches the collecting status of a Marshall Fogel, it’s clear that the collector must approach the passion both as a science and as an art.

While Fogel feels the impulse to collect is at its root very simple — “a collector is a person who wants something that another person has and won’t part with” — the science of intelligent collecting is much more complex.

Fogel considers himself a “hybrid” collector, that is, one who collects both for personal sentimentality and financial investment.

He collects on a “horizontal,” or broad, basis, focusing on condition and importance more than simple rarity. An item in especially good condition is itself usually rare, and importance equates with “things that are recognized by the public,” which explains why such players as Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth and Derek Jeter feature so prominently in his collection.

Another part of the science is the importance of understanding the value and establishing the authenticity of potential additions to a collection.

In the course of his collecting, Fogel has become a recognized expert on authenticating such things as game-used bats and original photographs, those printed from an original negative. He has written books and essays on such subjects and serves as a professional consultant for other collectors.

“A baseball bat from Babe Ruth can sell for $500,000,” Fogel illustrates.

“You want to be sure that the letter of authenticity comes from somebody who knows what they’re talking about. If you’re going to be a collector you’d better know what you’re doing. You can’t rely on what you read in an auction book.”

Accurate awareness of an object’s worth is just as important.

Timing is crucial, Fogel says: Knowing when to buy something, and understanding that demand for that item is likely to increase, is a crucial part of the investment dimension of collecting. It’s not unlike playing the stock market.

That involves correctly analyzing which teams and players are likely to become attractive to collectors, he says. The Yankees are a safe bet, for example, while less known, smaller market teams like the Colorado Rockies are considerably riskier.

“I have Gallaraga’s All Star uniform,” Fogel says, “but small market teams never win and I think it will be a long, long time before the Colorado Rockies are lucky enough to be in a World Series.”

That pragmatic and unsentimental approach to his own home team doesn’t mean that Fogel is immune to the sentimentality that is an integral part of baseball’s appeal, which is where collecting can become something of an art.

“I am sentimental,” he insists. “I love it.

“The reason baseball has such mystique and sentimentality is that people back in the 1800s came from all parts of the world and lived in segregated communities — the Poles, the Irish, the Jews, the Italians. They all had their little pockets in the community and created their own lifestyles within their own pockets.

“Then baseball games come along and they all come together and root for the same team. Pretty soon, social, personal and business relationships developed among these groups and baseball really was a format for the integration of society.”

Fogel is also drawn to baseball because of its emphasis on the “singular hero,” which distinguishes it from other sports.

“The power of the individual is what makes it so great. If you play football it takes 11 guys on each side to do something, basketball five on each side,” he says, “but in baseball, when you’re up at the plate there’s nine people trying to put you out. The ball is thrown and the batter is there. It’s like Gary Cooper in ‘High Noon.’”

He sounds almost poetic when he speaks of “the purity of the game.”

“Everything’s perfect,” Fogel says of a baseball game. “The grass, the field, the uniforms, the summer, being there with your dad or your mom and you’re sitting at the game and it’s a polite kind of atmosphere. And each position has its own greatness.”

While there is an undeniable “pride of ownership” in having such a celebrated collection, Fogel says he gets even more pleasure from sharing it with others. He often auctions tours of the collection for such non-profits as the Colorado Symphony, Craig Hospital, Temple Sinai, Father Woody’s homeless shelter and Denver Jewish Day School.

When he reaches the end of his life, Fogel says, he hopes the collection will have found a permanent home in Denver, where the public can view it and experience the joy it brought to the man who gathered it together.

“I’ve had people from all walks of life — heads of universities, heads of national banks, plumbers, cops, everybody — see the collection. It brings a commonality to all these people, regardless of their walk of life. It brings them back to being a kid. It’s amazing how they let their hair down and light up like neons.”

There is, believe it or not, much more to Fogel than baseball.

In addition to staying in touch with his legal career and learning to play the guitar (he’s four years along in studying the instrument), he is something of a cowboy.

A former horseman in the National Western Stock Show, he rode three-gated horses, military seat and Western style. When he gets the chance, he likes to “cut” horses, using them to herd cattle.

“It’s because my mother gave me horseback riding lessons when I started ditching school,” he says with a smile. “I love riding horses.”

He also wanted — at the age of 68 — to discover what it’s like to be a soldier. He enlisted in the Israeli army in a program that included a full course in the IDF boot camp.

“It was on my bucket list and I wanted to see if I could do it,” he says.

“I didn’t know it was going to be like that. That was full monty, boy. That was really hard. You do exactly what these kids do when they go to boot camp but they condense it. It was 114 degrees out there and you’re wearing all this stuff and that M-16 got real heavy. It wasn’t going to Laguna Beach, I can tell you that.”

Fogel endured the training because his family has connections to religious Judaism in Europe and early Zionism in Israel.

“I’ve always felt that if it wasn’t for Israel, Jews would not be in the shape they’re in today. It took us since the days of King David and Solomon for us to realize you can’t have a religion without an army.

“I also wanted to see what these kids were like. They come from all over the world, different colors, different cultures. They’re Ethiopian Jews, Russian Jews, Polish Jews, Arab Jews. You see all this together. I wanted to meet these people. It was an inspiration.

“Plus it was a personal achievement. It’s real time. I can understand why they’re good at what they do. They’re tough, they really are, and they have a reason to be. Maybe it’s magical, maybe it’s religion, maybe there is a G-d, maybe it’s just being industrious like they are. It’s makes you feel that it’s kinda neat to be a Jew.”

Fogel is also doing research that might one day result in a book about the East Side Jewish community in which he grew up.

It has to do with how members of his generation have managed to shake off the effects of anti-Semitism that profoundly affected how their parents regarded their Jewish identity.

“We came from parents who experienced some really bad things and they created a world for us that was a world within a world. There were those, and I can include myself, who stepped out but kept one foot in our heritage. It wasn’t easy to become part of another world and yet retain your heritage and culture and be proud to be a Jew.”

The project’s focus is on those Jews who were born between 1935 and 1950 and grew up in East Denver, because Fogel wants to keep his focus close to his own experience.

“The whole culture is lost if I don’t write about it,” he says. “What we did, how we acted, what our lives were like. It’s a story that hasn’t been told.”

Another story that hasn’t been fully told involves General Maurice Rose, the WW II hero from Denver who was killed shortly before the end of the war and became the namesake of General Rose Memorial Hospital, now Rose Medical Center.

Fogel has long been fascinated by the Rose story, including rumors that he may have given up his Jewish identity, and has been digging into records, correspondence and photos for years. He says he is close to publishing a book about what his research has uncovered.

“When I was a kid I’d go to Rose Hospital and I’d see General Rose’s helmet encased in plastic, with two bullet holes in it,” he says. “I always wondered about that.”

Previous articles and books about Rose have touched on the subject of his Jewishness but have never satisfied Fogel’s curiosity.

“Nobody wants to answer the question. They only want to pose the questions: Was he a Jew? Was he a Christian? What happened to his family?

“But I’ve got the answer,” he says with finality.

“With my background as a lawyer, I’ve pieced it together. It’s very complex. He was a very compartmentalized person. He had many lives within his life. I’ve got photographs that nobody else has found. I found secret documents in the archives, letters from Max Goldberg. I guarantee you, it almost reads like a Steven Spielberg movie.”

Hyping his upcoming book like a pro, Fogel refuses to divulge what answers he has uncovered.

“I’m not telling you,” he says. “You’ll have to wait to read it.”

We’ll also apparently have to wait to see what further chapters in Fogel’s life still lie ahead — what new interests and passions might come to possess him.

He is clearly a man who believes in pursuing one’s passion, in never hesitating to add to the proverbial bucket list.

Future additions to his own list, he says, will probably involve “looking into things that I haven’t thought about yet,” he says. “And I’m looking.”

His advice to others: “The more you can open yourself up to the experience of life, do it. Why play golf every day when you have the world out there to experience?”

His essential description of himself: “I may not be great at everything I do, but I sure enjoy what I do.”

Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News



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IJN Assistant Editor | [email protected]


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