Stolen Yankees Jacket

MYFOXNY.COM - As the Yankees go for another World Series championship, Yankee fans can come to the rescue of one of their own.  A valuable Yankees souvenir has been stolen.

Eddie Kull is devastated. A precious family heirloom entrusted to a sports memorabilia store in Garden City, Long Island, was stolen.

"Everyone is blaming each other," Kull says. No one has answers."

The story starts with the 1961 World Champion Yankees. We're talking about players like Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle. Back then, Eddie's grandfather Genero Calabrese worked at the stadium pouring beer.

One day a player named Jack Reed, Mantle's backup, gave Calabrese a lightweight jacket. For the next 46 years the family collected autographs on it.

"It's a very big deal going back to my grandfather, passed on to my dad," Kull says.

Kull collected many of the autographs with his grandfather and each signature had a special family trip and story behind it.

"It was a cool unique thing. We would go to shows an meet players and have them sign the jacket," Kull says.

A total of 37 signatures were on the jacket but the family never saw number 37's signature, the great Yogi Berra.

Two years ago, Berra was at an autograph signing at the Steiner Sports store in Garden City.

Kull couldn't make it, and as he had done in the past, he paid the store $160 to have Berra sign it.

He gave it to a store manager at the time named Ty Yin.

Kull says Yin promised he'd take care of it. "I gave it to him in a hanger with dry cleaning plastic over it to make sure nothing got on it. He put it in the back room he hung it closed the door."

Berra did sign they jacket but when Kull came to pick it up, Yin couldn't find it.

Eventually the Nassau County Police got involved. They questioned Yin, who no longer works at the store, and other people who were responsible for the safekeeping of the jacket.

Yin is not a suspect and no one is disputing that the jacket was stolen, including the head of the company, Brandon Steiner.

"We tried to do the do diligence by looking at the tape, interviewing all of the employees in the store and making sure that all of our distribution channels knew that the jacket was missing and we were looking for it," Steiner says.

Two years later there's still a huge dispute over what the jacket is worth, and how do you put a price on sentimental value and what it meant to Kull's family.

Steiner's company is one of the top sports memorabilia operations in the country with a good reputation.

But when it comes to making good on the jacket Kull says, "I was getting the runaround."

Kull's lawyer, Joe DiSalvo says: "I've spoken directly to some of the top executives at Steiner Sports. There's always some indication that 'we'll get on top of this' and then there's radio silence for a period of time that can really only be taken as an insult."

Steiner responded: "He felt like he was getting a run around mainly because he wanted a lot of money for something he only invested a few thousand dollars in."

Kull and his attorney originally asked for $100,000 for the jacket. Steiner, who specializes in selling things based purely on sentimental value, thought Kull's "sentimental" price was out of the ballpark.

"I feel horrible about it. It was a fun jacket," Steiner says. "It was a great project he was working on and I wish there was something I knew I could do about it, but on the other hand $100,000 for that jacket? If you ask any authenticator or ask anybody who does these kind of analysis on autographs and these kind of memorabilia projects, there's no one who is able to value that jacket at the same price he was asking."

DiSalvo recently came up with a new value of $53,000 for the jacket. He added up the estimated market value of each signature and tried to come up with mathematical calculations for things like "immeasurable emotional value" but Steinner says the matter is in his insurance company's hands.

"I do think there's some kind of a compromise to be had here," Steiner says.

Kull and his attorney are tired of waiting and are planning to sue Steiner.

The memorabilia guru was in the headlines recently getting whacked with a $5 million class-action suit that claims Yankees stadium seats he sold were not what were advertised.

As both sides dicker over the price of the jacket, everyone agrees that this story might help the jacket pop up.

"A real zealous fanatical Yankees memorabilia keeper would salivate over the chance to have and display it and I don't think it is ever going to show its face on the open market again," DiSalvo says.

The police case is inactive but Fox 5 is willing to take any information with the goal of getting the jacket back, no questions asked.

Steiner Sports is offering a $2,500 gift certificate to anyone who has information leading to the safe return of the jacket.

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