This lot is closed. Bidding ended on 5/11/2001.
Ron Guidry was known as "Louisiana Lighting" for the way his fastball seemed to scream out of the sky like a bolt of fire. In 1978, the lighting struck again and again, as Guidry posted a 25-3 record and an ERA of 1.74, numbers that won him the Cy Young Award by a unanimous vote. Guidry did all this even though he barely scaled 150 pounds, a good half of which was probably the wad of tobacco he kept inside his jaw. Guidry was known to keep the area around the pitching mound well-lubricated with brown juice, but when he was in the clubhouse he would make his squirted deposits into this brass spittoon, which years later he signed and inscribed "To My Pal Barry – Ron Guidry – 1989" in blue ink, with the signature rating a 6. The spittoon stands 6 ½", 8 ½" in circumference, and as you might expect it is liberally speckled with the residue of the times when Guidry's aim with tobacco juice wasn't as good as it was with a baseball. But then, it is a spittoon. It comes with proof of ownership.