It’ll Look Better Hanging in a Museum

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While at the state fair earlier this year, I ran into someone from the Frazier History Museum, one of the many museums on “Museum Row” in downtown Louisville. I asked about donating something, and he gave me a name and an e-mail. The Frazier History Museum has the rotten luck of being ignored because it’s right across the street from that 120-foot tall baseball bat outside of the Louisville Slugger Museum. But it’s a really cool museum, devoted to Louisville and Kentucky history. Near it there’s the Science Museum and KMAC (Kentucky Museum of Arts and Crafts) Contemporary Arts Museum, in addition to the place where Louisville hockey sticks are made. Here’s the boring backstory about the jacket. Once upon a time there were more than two leagues in professional baseball. The Louisville Colonels were part of the American Association League. It folded after a decade, and the Colonels moved to the National League before they (the team) folded. All of this was before my grandparents were born, so don’t think any of these players are playing for the Dodgers now. By the time I came along the Louisville Colonels were in the minor league’s International League as the AAA farm team for the Boston Red Sox. Loving baseball the way I do, I cheered them on. Come to find out (and showing you how much baseball has changed in the past 50-60 years), their third baseman, John Mason, worked in the offseason with my dear aunt of blessed memory. (Yeah, minor league players had to work in the offseason to live.) He gave her the jacket in the photo to give me in 1971, and signed it “Mase” (his nickname). Mason never got called up to the majors. In the 80s he became the head coach of the University of Louisville baseball team. He passed away in 2020. The jacket has been pretty much everywhere I’ve been (except Hawaii, I rightfully said I wouldn’t need a heavy wool coat for the weather over there). It’s been hanging in my garage for years, and I looked at it one day and thought it’d be better hanging in a museum. Yesterday, one of the few moments of freedom I have between appointments (Veterans Day, so the VA clinics are closed), I took the jacket to the museum. I was rewarded with a gratis trip through the museum, which I’ll discuss later. They have a sports room, and some of the things in there were uniforms of American Basketball Association Kentucky Colonels players Louie Dampier, Dan Issel, and Artis Gilmore. Those Colonels won the final ABA championship (the league folded after that season). Dodgers star Will Smith, a Louisville native, has also donated his catcher’s gear from the Dodgers’ 2025 World Series season. And, of course, that Cassius Clay guy…. The jacket is only the second item (behind something from the 1920s Colonels) from the baseball team that’s ever been acquired by the museum. Maybe this’ll open the gates of others to recall a great time of baseball in Louisville.