Authentication / Restoration
1979 Dock Ellis Texas Rangers Jersey
Collector Guy H. always challenges me with restorations that are outside the norm. Here, he sent me this 1979 Rangers jersey that lacked a name on back and had non-standard back numbers. He asked me to try to find out what it was.
Pitcher Dock Ellis wore #17 for the Rangers at the start of the 1979 season, but he was traded to the Mets in early June. In July, pitcher Bob Babcock was assigned #17, and given Ellis’ old jersey with his name newly stitched to the back. Before the season ended, Babcock had his number changed to 20.
When put on the light table, I could clearly see the outlines of Babcock’s name there. But evidence of either the #17 or Ellis’ name were not readily apparent. This photo highlights Babcock’s name on back.
Looking very closely, I could see that there had indeed been another name underneath the shadow of Babcock. The first letter did not look like an “E” in Ellis and it was too far to the left to have the name “ELLIS centered on back. Examining the Rangers’ roster I saw that there was another Ellis on the team, #9, cacher John Ellis, and apparently his jersey said simply “Ellis”, while Dock Ellis’ jersey said “D. Ellis”.
Proof: this photo from the prior season shows Ellis pitching and we can see that he had the first letter of his surname on his jersey!
I have recreated the Rangers’ fonts from the late 70s using many game-worn jerseys as my guides. Notice that the team used different fonts for home vs. road uniforms. Different makers sewed the home and road jerseys in each year, and this being the 1970s there were no computer-generated patterns to share, only drawings on paper. Therefore, each maker used its own fonts. And nobody seemed to care back then.
But I was stumped. I used my scanned image of the back of the jersey and tried to make “D. Ellis” fit in the standard font, the one used for the long name “BABCOCK” covering the scant shadows I could see of the name that had been there before. And try as I might, I could not make it fit. I kept going back and forth looking at the spacing of Ellis’ name on the back of his prior year jersey and it stumped me. It just would not align with the shadows that were not part of the Babcock name.
And then it occurred to me—- the team may have arbitrarily used the condensed font for Dock Ellis’s name in 1979. On a guess, I reset his name using the Rangers’ alternate, slightly narrower font that was generally reserved for longer names— and voila! It matched. Now, look at the bottom image: when name/numbers are removed, the corners and points of letters -- where stitching is the most dense -- often leaves tiny holes in the shirt that are visible only on the light table. The tiny red circles show these almost invisible and seemingly random small holes. (Click to enlarge)
Next we turned to the player numbers. Notice that the “0” in the 20 does not match the team pattern for road jerseys. It’s likely they used numbers taken off another uniform. Once the old numbers were removed, the ghosts of the prior “17” became more visible. Using the three-color pattern for the team’s road numbers proved a perfect overlay match.
I prepared this proof for Guy to approve, showing the style and placement of the new lettering. The actual jersey of the *other* Ellis, catcher John Ellis, is shown here. It also uses the condensed font! (Click to enlarge)
I cut new lettering and aged it using my usual techniques, including boiling them in Lipton tea to discolor and slightly pucker them. I sewed them on with thread a slight shade lighter to simulate the bleaching that was apparent on the front lettering, allowing for a harmonious match.
Guy asked me to do a full write up on the restoration and to authenticate the jersey. I can’t stress enough how important this step is in cementing the collector value of a jersey. An authenticator may easily fail the jersey noting that it has been altered, unable to see the evidence that it had actually been restored to original. (Click to enlarge)
Here is the final result! A beautiful example of an uncommon style in good condition for a storied player. (Click to enlarge)