A question arises about baseball’s long lost first World Series trophy: should it be recreated?
Back in 2011, when I was named MLB’s official historian and this blog was new, I posted a three-part story titled “Baseball’s Lost Chalice,” which I introduced thus:
The strange story of Helen Dauvray and baseball’s first world’s championship trophy will be published at Our Game in three parts this week. Ballplayers and entertainment stars have always had a lot in common. Both expect and enjoy the limelight; both are separated from the rest of us by the adulation and money we pour on them. Sometimes in their separation from the rest of society they reach out to each other in matrimony: Rube Marquard and Blossom Seeley, Mike Donlin and Mabel Hite, Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe. In the 1880s John Montgomery Ward and Helen Dauvray had all the star power of any of them. Prior to their marriage Miss Dauvray had established an eponymous loving cup as the reward for winning the World Championship in 1887 and succeeding years. The Cup has been lost for so long that no one alive has seen it. Recent discoveries in the archives of the Gorham Manufacturing Company reveal much new detail about the cup; however, recent discoveries about its donor are even more interesting.
Today I would like simply to offer the only existing photographs of the Dauvray Cup, located in the archives of the Gorham Company by friend Samuel Hough. Over the weekend I received a query about the cup from another baseball friend, Jay Miller, who concluded our exchange by noting, “Has anyone thought about making a copy of the Cup from the pictures and donating it to the Hall of Fame?”
Hmmm, I thought. Might the recent advances in 3-D printing technology permit the inexpensive reproduction of the Dauvray Cup or, maybe better yet, a mold for its casting into various substances? The original article may be read at the links below, but below are the three surviving images of the Dauvray Cup.
P.S. Here’s a new wrinkle, via a tip from Richard Hershberger, who writes, “The last known (to me) sighting of the Dauvray Cup was in 1905, when [Arthur] Soden stated that it was in his possession and belonged to the Boston Club by virtue of their winning the pennant three years running, from 1891 to 1893.” I remain skeptical, as the whereabouts of the cup were unknown from 1894 to the present day, and neither Soden nor anyone else made further mention of it. But perhaps his statement may be regarded as a clue.
The links to the original story:
The Dauvray Cup was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.