RUSH singer-bassist Geddy Lee has been an avid collector of baseball memorabilia for decades, and now he’s auctioning off hundred of items from his collection.
Lee’s love for the game of baseball led him to pursue artifacts from America’s favorite pastime while touring the States with RUSH in the late 1970s. He’s been collecting ever since, obtaining some truly remarkable pieces along the way — some of which will be put on the block on December 6th during a live auction hosted by Christie’s and Hunt Auctions.
Highlights include a baseball signed by The Beatles during their Shea Stadium appearance in 1965; balls signed by US presidents John F. Kennedy, Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson; and a bat used by Mickey Mantle in the 1960 World Series. Overall, Geddy’s collection includes “hundreds of autographed and historic milestone baseballs, spanning over three centuries of Major League Baseball and American history.”
Other notable autographed balls seen in the image on Christie’s auction listing feature the names of legendary hall-of-famers such as Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Brock, and more.
“If you really look at it from an abstract point of view, it’s greed,” Lee told The Athletic regarding his pursuit of baseball memorabilia. “You want to own the game. You want to own a piece of every great player, to hold in your hand a ball that was signed by Lou Gehrig.
It just became a magnificent obsession for me.”
On his massive collection of signed baseballs and his willingness to part with many of them, Geddy added: “Baseballs, nobody owns them. They’re like houses. You take care of them for a while, and then they move on to the next person, the next custodian.”
Despite offering over 300 items via the Christie’s auction, Lee still has plenty of baseball memorabilia left in his possession. In an Instagram post announcing the auction, he quipped, “I must have had too much stuff because after these selections were sent to Christie’s my wife stepped into my office and said, ‘Hey! I thought you were selling some of your collection??’ … Uh, yeah Honey, I am…. Oopsie!”