Smithsonian Baseball; Inside the World's Finest Private Collections

x, 286 pages. Illustrations (many in color). Format is approximately 9.25 inches by 11.5 inches. Wong, a lifelong collector of rare and historically significant baseball artifacts, has focused his collection on the relationships that underlie the game's greatest pairings and groupings - items that represent the bonds that were formed among two or more players who went on to define an era: Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance; -Dizzy and Daffy Dean; Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, and the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, to name a few. He has served as an advisor for many of the world's top collectors, and is currently lending his expertise to an upcoming exhibition at the Chicago Historical Society, celebrating the glory days of Chicago Cubs and White Sox baseball in the early 20th century. A graduate of Stanford Law School, Wong spent ten years working in finance and investment banking and is currently an Executive Director with Goldman Sachs. This is a Smithsonian Book. The first chapter of Wong's book, titled Genesis, highlights the Corey R. Shanus collection of 19th-Century memorabilia. From there readers are taken on an emotional journey through the amassments of the most legendary names in sports collecting - Gary Cypres, Brian Seigel, Nick Depace, Marshall Fogel, Penny Marshall, Charles Merkel, Bill DeWitt, Jr. and Bill Mastro to name a few. The bringing together of these collecting greats can only be described as ingenious. Although the idea for the book, like all ingenious ideas, is simple enough, in order to make such a project a reality, the right person must guide it. Wong is clearly the right guy for the job as he intricately weaves his love and passion for the game into a tapestry of emotions that will consume the dedicated baseball fan and intrigue those who perhaps just catch a game or two come October. The book is clearly a labor of love. Wong's muse saw him turn his back on the corporate world and take off on a two-and-a-half-year odyssey that took him from coast-to-coast in a quixotic search for the collectors who have reached the same legendary status in the collecting world as the Gehrigs, Ruths, DiMaggios, Aarons, and Mantles have in the nation's ballparks.…