1962 autographed World Series baseball brings $30,000 for Kaiser Carlile memorial

A 1962 autographed World Series baseball that links a Kansas World Series baseball player and two Kansas boys will remain in Kansas.

The ball, which raised $30,000 this past weekend in Liberal, will go toward building a memorial statue to Kaiser Carlile. Kaiser, the 9-year-old bat boy for the Liberal Bee Jays, was accidentally struck in the head by a bat and killed last month during a National Baseball Congress World Series game in Wichita.

The autographed baseball from the 1962 New York Yankees, along with vintage newspaper clippings of Ralph Terry, who was the World Series MVP that year, will be part of an exhibit on display at a Hall of Fame at the Seward Community College in Liberal. Terry, who now lives in Larned, gave the autographed baseball to Rudy Watson after the ’62 World Series. Rudy, a tiny St. John boy, had been born with osteogenesis imperfecta, more commonly known as brittle bone disease.

In 1966, 13-year-old Rudy died of a head injury at a baseball game when a foul ball struck his head.

Earlier this month, Randy Watson – Rudy’s brother– decided to donate the ball to a silent auction after seeing similarities in Rudy and Kaiser’s lives. Besides Terry’s, names on the ball include Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Bobby Richardson, Roger Maris and Whitey Ford.

The auction was Saturday night.

“I wanted it to stay in Liberal and so did the people there,” Watson said Sunday. “One person and an organization both pledged $15,000 apiece.”

Watson said that although 49 summers may have separated the boys, they were remarkably similar in personalities.

“Both were big persons in little bodies,” Watson said. “Both were scrappers. They were dedicated and had to try hard to do everything.”

By keeping the ball in Liberal, he said, it will also allow the legacy of Kaiser, Rudy and Terry to remain part of Kansas baseball history, Watson said.

“All my life, I have lived with the thought of how this all started with what Ralph Terry did,” Watson said. “I thought if he can do that, maybe I ought to follow his example. This whole thing was meant to be – it was exactly how God intended it to be. I have always wondered why Ralph gave Rudy that ball. But when things happen, you don’t always know the answer.

“But sometimes 49 years later, you learn the answer.”

This story was originally published September 20, 2015 at 9:09 PM with the headline "1962 autographed World Series baseball brings $30,000 for Kaiser Carlile memorial."