May 24, 2024 • 13 mins
Ever found yourself clutching onto a piece of history that takes you straight back to the heart of your fondest memories? That's exactly the case with my cherished sports memorabilia collection, which I'm ecstatic to share with you all on this episode of "Sound-off with Sinkoff". This trove of treasures isn't just a bunch of signed items; it's a snapshot of my youth, each piece steeped in stories from the DC area sports teams I grew up adoring. From the Washington Bullets to the Capitals, Orioles, and the Redskins — each autograph spins a yarn of the past that has shaped my love for sports.
Whether you're a sports fanatic or someone who cherishes a good stroll down memory lane, this podcast episode will resonate with that part of you that holds dear to the mementos from life's most pivotal moments.
Join me, Brian Sinkoff, for a nostalgic trip that celebrates more than the game—it's a tribute to the memories that bind us to our passions.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody and welcome to Sound Off with Sync
Off.
I'm your host, brian Syncoff.
Thanks so much for checking outmy podcast here.
Wherever you get your podcasts,of course, sound Off with
Syncoff sponsored by the SyncoffRealty Group Syncoff Realty
Group located in the heart ofDel Mar, new York, in the
capital region of New York, justoutside of Albany.
(00:24):
All right, we are rolling onthese podcasts, just absolutely
lining them up and knocking themdown.
We've talked sports, we'vetalked pop culture, we've talked
lots of things, and this iswhat I promised you the podcast
would be Today.
I wanted to talk to you a littlebit about sports memorabilia.
As a sports fan everyone outthere, I know you have a prized
sports memorabilia.
(00:44):
As a sports fan everyone outthere I know you have a prized
sports memorabilia possession.
You have a prize possession inon you in your favorite room,
locked away in a safe, whetherit's like a, a rookie don
mattingly or a mickey mannell ora tom siever, whatever it might
be, uh, you know, is it anautographed baseball?
(01:04):
Maybe a ticket stub?
Perhaps a program of the firstever game you attended with your
dad or with your friends?
For me mine personally goesback to 1984, and it's actually
four pieces of memorabilia.
It is a.
I want to show it to you and Ithink the cool thing about it is
(01:29):
this was a gift from my mom formy bar mitzvah.
So here it is, right here onthe left side of your screen.
This is my office, by the way,at the Sinkoff Realty Group, a
little wall of fame withpictures of some famous people
I've met pop culture and sports.
There's Cal Ripken, there's theguy from the Office Walking
(01:54):
Dead, stephen Mell from Arrow,mariano Rivera.
But here is the prizedpossession, my sports
memorabilia, prized possession,sports memorabilia, prize
possession, and that is um,something that is near and dear
to my heart.
I'm gonna zip through all fourof them here.
But what?
This is a gift from my mom tome for my bar metzvah.
(02:18):
These are four autographed umplaques I guess you could say
autographed, really pieces ofpaper from each of the
professional sports teams in theDC area where I grew up.
So you have from the WashingtonBullets, from the Capitals,
from the Orioles and from theWashington Redskins, which, of
(02:41):
course, was their team nicknameat the time.
So my mom, she actually this ispre internet, you know, you
didn't have cell phones, so shewent, she got the numbers of
each of the teams made a phonecall, said I'm going to be
sending this to you for my son,will the team sign it?
And amazingly they did and theysent it back and it and it's,
(03:05):
it's.
They're in pristine condition.
They're in frames the originalframes that they were in when I
got them, and it is just anawesome collection, a thing for
my collection.
We're going to go through eachof the teams individually and
again they're personalized.
My mom had the artist that didsort of the calligraphy for the
(03:27):
bar mitzvah.
You know everyone the sign-inboard right, you've all been to
a wedding or bar mitzvah, you'veseen that.
So this sort of matched themotif of the sign-in board but
it was done in the team colors.
So here you have the bulletsright.
Probably of the four teams thismight have been the worst team.
They were a non-playoff team,maybe like a 500 team.
(03:48):
It's kind of crappy.
Gene Shue's the coach, the lateGene Shue.
Jeff Rulon played at Iona.
Coached at Iona as well.
Bernie Bickerstaff, whose sonis a coach, or was just got
fired.
Frank Johnson, ricky Mahorn,the Beef Brothers right.
Greg Ballard, jeff Malone.
(04:11):
Tom McMillan, darren Day, Ithink, played at UCLA.
This was like the year beforeor the two years before.
Moses Malone joined the BulletsAgain now the Wizards, but back
then they were called theBullets.
So that's the Bullets.
Next is the Capitals.
This was actually a playoffteam.
I think this was like theirthird straight year of making
(04:32):
the playoffs.
Remember the organization onlystarted in 74, so this is like a
10-year-old franchise here andthis was an era.
They first made the playoffs mycaps in 82, and then kind of
became playoff regulars fromthat point on.
But you can see there's a fewHall of Famers on this Bobby
Carpenter, mike Gardner,500-goal scorer.
(04:53):
You got.
Scott Stevens, former NewJersey Devil won a few cups with
them.
Rod Langway right here Remember, rod Langway didn't wear a
helmet.
Doug Jarvis is here.
I believe he had at one pointmost consecutive games played in
the NHL, I believe since beenbroken.
Larry Murphy I believe he's aHall of Famer.
(05:17):
There might be three Hall ofFamers on here.
Dave Christian played on the USOlympic team, right, remember
Dave Christian.
Scotty Stevens we said.
Gaetan Duchesne.
Greg Adams, alan Hallworth Ithink that is Al Jensen, the
goalie.
I don't.
It's hard to read Craig Lachlan, who is an announcer with the
(05:41):
Caps.
Now, to this day.
That is the Caps.
Here is the Orioles.
Cool thing about the Oriolesand the Redskins, which I'll get
to in a second the Orioles werecoming off a World Series in 83
, their last World Series title.
I know that's pretty bad, butthat was their last World Series
title.
So this is the following yearafter the World Series and you
(06:04):
got to remember most of theteams in that era yes, free
agency, not as big as it is now.
So most of the teams, I meanthey did have free agency, but
not nearly what it is today.
So most of the teams actuallystayed together.
So this is the year after theywon the world series.
This probably I I want to say Idon't know the details of how
my mom got it and when, but Iwould say these, these guys
(06:26):
probably signed this in springtraining of 84, and 84 is the
year the tigers won the worldseries.
Like they started 30 and 5 orwhatever.
Anyway, here's hall of famer calripken, jr.
Right here.
Uh, you got eddie murray rightthere, hall of famer.
Uh, also jim palmer, who was apitcher on that team.
(06:47):
So there's three Hall of Famersright there Mike Boddicker, joe
Nolan, al Bumry, ken SingletonMany Yankee fans know him, a
member of the yes Network formany years Tom Underwood, alrod
Hendricks, legendary coach JimmyDwyer.
Here is Scotty McGregor, tippieMartinez, coach jimmy dwyer uh,
(07:10):
here is scotty mcgregor, tippymartinez.
Uh, todd cruz, floyd rayford,len cicada uh, really cool.
But there's ripken, there'spalmer and there is eddie murray
.
So those three, those threehall of famers cited, and then
you have the Redskins againtheir name, today the commanders
, but back then the Redskins.
But you could see just how coolthis is.
(07:33):
Uh, personalized to me from theRedskins.
It was like the team wrote up,gave me a bar mitzvah card.
Like that is just amazing, itis.
It just warms my heart to thinkthat my mom did that for me.
Love you, mom.
This podcast, this episode's foryou, because this is still one
(07:53):
of my favorite things ever.
But here's the Redskins.
You got, I believe, two orthree Hall of Famers on this one
Tony McGee Hall of Famers.
Or Art Monk, john Riggins,right there.
Joe Theismann, george Stark,vernon Dean, dave Butts, curtis
Jordan I mean I could read allthese names Rich Malat they also
(08:17):
helps to put their numbers MarkMay you can see, he autographed
it with the Hogs Alvin Garrett,mel Kaufman, charlie Brown,
receiver Russ Grimm Jacoby, agreat offensive line back then.
Donnie Warren, jeff Hayes, thepunter, mosley, the kicker,
bostic, the center.
Mcgee, defensive lineman.
Mike Nelms was the kickreturner, extraordinaire.
(08:38):
Ricky Doc Walker, tight end.
Vernon Dean, cornerback, buttswas a defensive tackle nose
guard and Curtis Jordan was asafety and then George Stark as
well, the whole line.
All the hogs signed it.
So that is.
And then there is a shot of myoffice with those, with those
pictures.
So that is really an awesomething that my mom did for me and
(09:04):
I, you know I Somebody asked mebecause people have seen this,
they've come into my office.
It's a great talking point whenI bring people in, whether it's
clients or you know, talking toagents about joining the Sync
Off Realty Group.
But I don't know, like what thetrue value of it is, simply
(09:33):
because it's personalized.
You know it's got my name on it, it's got, you know, the date,
which is pretty cool.
But most memorabilia, theautograph stuff that's really
worth a lot of money is just astraight autograph.
It's not personalized, it'sjust just the person's name.
(09:55):
So you know, as far as valueit's, it's tough to say I'll
never would sell it, I'd neverget rid of it, cause it's just,
it's a great memory, it's agreat gift.
I'll never forget I had the barmitzvah in the morning, we had
a little break and then we wentto dinner and the party at night
where I was break dancing and Iopened that they were like
wrapped up and I just couldn'tbelieve, you know, because the
(10:19):
question was, how did my mom doit?
Like remember, no Internet, noneof that stuff Like there was a
lot of effort to get the personto do the calligraphy of the
congratulations, lot of effortto get the person to do the
calligraphy of thecongratulations, brian Scott,
sink off and then have all theteams you know with getting that
to all the teams physicallymailing it to them and then
having the team sign it.
(10:40):
That's what I find the mostremarkable about this is that it
seems like almost every playersigned it and the participation
of the teams was tremendous.
So, like props to my mom andwhoever she talked to for making
sure the team signed it,because today you couldn't have
pulled that off.
There's just no way.
(11:01):
I don't think they, the teams,just get inundated right now.
Um, you don't have to have acontact.
You can just, you know, go to awebsite.
You just mail something back.
Then you had to make an alittle bit of an effort to look
up the address, to communicatewith someone, but back, you know
, now I don't think, I don'tthink a team would do that um, I
(11:24):
could be wrong.
You probably have to wait ninemonths.
Maybe they do it only becauseit's personalized.
But then you know, wouldeverybody sign it?
You know, if you were a Yankeefan, would Aaron Judge sign it?
Would Cole sign it?
Would Soto sign it?
Like, I'm not dogging thoseguys, but you know, are they
signing something like that?
I don't know.
(11:45):
So that is what theparticipation, the fact that it
was the effort to get it, andthen just the you know the
display aspect.
It's just, you know, it's a 40year old gift and it's also in
like mint condition.
That's what's so cool about it.
It's still pristine.
So not an autographed baseball,it's not a ticket stub, it's
(12:09):
not a rookie card in mintcondition.
It's a bar mitzvah gift from myfour favorite teams at the time
, which, by the way, they stillare.
And I will admit, I'm still aWizards fan.
Bullets now, wizards yeah, thatwas a pretty bad team back then
, but they participated.
So credit to all those proteams for making that happen.
(12:31):
So thanks, mom, for the awesomebar mitzvah gift.
I'm giving you props on that.
Some 40 years later, reallyappreciate it.
So, that being said, what arewhat's your favorite sports
memorabilia piece?
You can comment, you can sharethis, you can.
You can email me, you canmessage me.
(12:53):
I'd love to hear what yourfavorite sports memorabilia
piece is.
But that is going to do it forthis edition of SoundOff with
SyncOff.
I want to thank you so much forjoining me Again.
Soundoff, sponsored by theSyncOff Realty Group right here
in Del Mar, for all of yourbuying and selling of real
estate needs.
I will see you next time.
(13:14):
Make sure you check out all theprevious podcasts and the
future ones, because I don'tknow when the heck you're
watching this.
But have a great day everyone.
Thanks again for watching.
Hello everybody and welcome to Sound Off with Sync
Off.
I'm your host, brian Syncoff.
Thanks so much for checking outmy podcast here.
Wherever you get your podcasts,of course, sound Off with
Syncoff sponsored by the SyncoffRealty Group Syncoff Realty
Group located in the heart ofDel Mar, new York, in the
capital region of New York, justoutside of Albany.
(00:24):
All right, we are rolling onthese podcasts, just absolutely
lining them up and knocking themdown.
We've talked sports, we'vetalked pop culture, we've talked
lots of things, and this iswhat I promised you the podcast
would be Today.
I wanted to talk to you a littlebit about sports memorabilia.
As a sports fan everyone outthere, I know you have a prized
sports memorabilia.
(00:44):
As a sports fan everyone outthere I know you have a prized
sports memorabilia possession.
You have a prize possession inon you in your favorite room,
locked away in a safe, whetherit's like a, a rookie don
mattingly or a mickey mannell ora tom siever, whatever it might
be, uh, you know, is it anautographed baseball?
(01:04):
Maybe a ticket stub?
Perhaps a program of the firstever game you attended with your
dad or with your friends?
For me mine personally goesback to 1984, and it's actually
four pieces of memorabilia.
It is a.
I want to show it to you and Ithink the cool thing about it is
(01:29):
this was a gift from my mom formy bar mitzvah.
So here it is, right here onthe left side of your screen.
This is my office, by the way,at the Sinkoff Realty Group, a
little wall of fame withpictures of some famous people
I've met pop culture and sports.
There's Cal Ripken, there's theguy from the Office Walking
(01:54):
Dead, stephen Mell from Arrow,mariano Rivera.
But here is the prizedpossession, my sports
memorabilia, prized possession,sports memorabilia, prize
possession, and that is um,something that is near and dear
to my heart.
I'm gonna zip through all fourof them here.
But what?
This is a gift from my mom tome for my bar metzvah.
(02:18):
These are four autographed umplaques I guess you could say
autographed, really pieces ofpaper from each of the
professional sports teams in theDC area where I grew up.
So you have from the WashingtonBullets, from the Capitals,
from the Orioles and from theWashington Redskins, which, of
(02:41):
course, was their team nicknameat the time.
So my mom, she actually this ispre internet, you know, you
didn't have cell phones, so shewent, she got the numbers of
each of the teams made a phonecall, said I'm going to be
sending this to you for my son,will the team sign it?
And amazingly they did and theysent it back and it and it's,
(03:05):
it's.
They're in pristine condition.
They're in frames the originalframes that they were in when I
got them, and it is just anawesome collection, a thing for
my collection.
We're going to go through eachof the teams individually and
again they're personalized.
My mom had the artist that didsort of the calligraphy for the
(03:27):
bar mitzvah.
You know everyone the sign-inboard right, you've all been to
a wedding or bar mitzvah, you'veseen that.
So this sort of matched themotif of the sign-in board but
it was done in the team colors.
So here you have the bulletsright.
Probably of the four teams thismight have been the worst team.
They were a non-playoff team,maybe like a 500 team.
(03:48):
It's kind of crappy.
Gene Shue's the coach, the lateGene Shue.
Jeff Rulon played at Iona.
Coached at Iona as well.
Bernie Bickerstaff, whose sonis a coach, or was just got
fired.
Frank Johnson, ricky Mahorn,the Beef Brothers right.
Greg Ballard, jeff Malone.
(04:11):
Tom McMillan, darren Day, Ithink, played at UCLA.
This was like the year beforeor the two years before.
Moses Malone joined the BulletsAgain now the Wizards, but back
then they were called theBullets.
So that's the Bullets.
Next is the Capitals.
This was actually a playoffteam.
I think this was like theirthird straight year of making
(04:32):
the playoffs.
Remember the organization onlystarted in 74, so this is like a
10-year-old franchise here andthis was an era.
They first made the playoffs mycaps in 82, and then kind of
became playoff regulars fromthat point on.
But you can see there's a fewHall of Famers on this Bobby
Carpenter, mike Gardner,500-goal scorer.
(04:53):
You got.
Scott Stevens, former NewJersey Devil won a few cups with
them.
Rod Langway right here Remember, rod Langway didn't wear a
helmet.
Doug Jarvis is here.
I believe he had at one pointmost consecutive games played in
the NHL, I believe since beenbroken.
Larry Murphy I believe he's aHall of Famer.
(05:17):
There might be three Hall ofFamers on here.
Dave Christian played on the USOlympic team, right, remember
Dave Christian.
Scotty Stevens we said.
Gaetan Duchesne.
Greg Adams, alan Hallworth Ithink that is Al Jensen, the
goalie.
I don't.
It's hard to read Craig Lachlan, who is an announcer with the
(05:41):
Caps.
Now, to this day.
That is the Caps.
Here is the Orioles.
Cool thing about the Oriolesand the Redskins, which I'll get
to in a second the Orioles werecoming off a World Series in 83
, their last World Series title.
I know that's pretty bad, butthat was their last World Series
title.
So this is the following yearafter the World Series and you
(06:04):
got to remember most of theteams in that era yes, free
agency, not as big as it is now.
So most of the teams, I meanthey did have free agency, but
not nearly what it is today.
So most of the teams actuallystayed together.
So this is the year after theywon the world series.
This probably I I want to say Idon't know the details of how
my mom got it and when, but Iwould say these, these guys
(06:26):
probably signed this in springtraining of 84, and 84 is the
year the tigers won the worldseries.
Like they started 30 and 5 orwhatever.
Anyway, here's hall of famer calripken, jr.
Right here.
Uh, you got eddie murray rightthere, hall of famer.
Uh, also jim palmer, who was apitcher on that team.
(06:47):
So there's three Hall of Famersright there Mike Boddicker, joe
Nolan, al Bumry, ken SingletonMany Yankee fans know him, a
member of the yes Network formany years Tom Underwood, alrod
Hendricks, legendary coach JimmyDwyer.
Here is Scotty McGregor, tippieMartinez, coach jimmy dwyer uh,
(07:10):
here is scotty mcgregor, tippymartinez.
Uh, todd cruz, floyd rayford,len cicada uh, really cool.
But there's ripken, there'spalmer and there is eddie murray
.
So those three, those threehall of famers cited, and then
you have the Redskins againtheir name, today the commanders
, but back then the Redskins.
But you could see just how coolthis is.
(07:33):
Uh, personalized to me from theRedskins.
It was like the team wrote up,gave me a bar mitzvah card.
Like that is just amazing, itis.
It just warms my heart to thinkthat my mom did that for me.
Love you, mom.
This podcast, this episode's foryou, because this is still one
(07:53):
of my favorite things ever.
But here's the Redskins.
You got, I believe, two orthree Hall of Famers on this one
Tony McGee Hall of Famers.
Or Art Monk, john Riggins,right there.
Joe Theismann, george Stark,vernon Dean, dave Butts, curtis
Jordan I mean I could read allthese names Rich Malat they also
(08:17):
helps to put their numbers MarkMay you can see, he autographed
it with the Hogs Alvin Garrett,mel Kaufman, charlie Brown,
receiver Russ Grimm Jacoby, agreat offensive line back then.
Donnie Warren, jeff Hayes, thepunter, mosley, the kicker,
bostic, the center.
Mcgee, defensive lineman.
Mike Nelms was the kickreturner, extraordinaire.
(08:38):
Ricky Doc Walker, tight end.
Vernon Dean, cornerback, buttswas a defensive tackle nose
guard and Curtis Jordan was asafety and then George Stark as
well, the whole line.
All the hogs signed it.
So that is.
And then there is a shot of myoffice with those, with those
pictures.
So that is really an awesomething that my mom did for me and
(09:04):
I, you know I Somebody asked mebecause people have seen this,
they've come into my office.
It's a great talking point whenI bring people in, whether it's
clients or you know, talking toagents about joining the Sync
Off Realty Group.
But I don't know, like what thetrue value of it is, simply
(09:33):
because it's personalized.
You know it's got my name on it, it's got, you know, the date,
which is pretty cool.
But most memorabilia, theautograph stuff that's really
worth a lot of money is just astraight autograph.
It's not personalized, it'sjust just the person's name.
(09:55):
So you know, as far as valueit's, it's tough to say I'll
never would sell it, I'd neverget rid of it, cause it's just,
it's a great memory, it's agreat gift.
I'll never forget I had the barmitzvah in the morning, we had
a little break and then we wentto dinner and the party at night
where I was break dancing and Iopened that they were like
wrapped up and I just couldn'tbelieve, you know, because the
(10:19):
question was, how did my mom doit?
Like remember, no Internet, noneof that stuff Like there was a
lot of effort to get the personto do the calligraphy of the
congratulations, lot of effortto get the person to do the
calligraphy of thecongratulations, brian Scott,
sink off and then have all theteams you know with getting that
to all the teams physicallymailing it to them and then
having the team sign it.
(10:40):
That's what I find the mostremarkable about this is that it
seems like almost every playersigned it and the participation
of the teams was tremendous.
So, like props to my mom andwhoever she talked to for making
sure the team signed it,because today you couldn't have
pulled that off.
There's just no way.
(11:01):
I don't think they, the teams,just get inundated right now.
Um, you don't have to have acontact.
You can just, you know, go to awebsite.
You just mail something back.
Then you had to make an alittle bit of an effort to look
up the address, to communicatewith someone, but back, you know
, now I don't think, I don'tthink a team would do that um, I
(11:24):
could be wrong.
You probably have to wait ninemonths.
Maybe they do it only becauseit's personalized.
But then you know, wouldeverybody sign it?
You know, if you were a Yankeefan, would Aaron Judge sign it?
Would Cole sign it?
Would Soto sign it?
Like, I'm not dogging thoseguys, but you know, are they
signing something like that?
I don't know.
(11:45):
So that is what theparticipation, the fact that it
was the effort to get it, andthen just the you know the
display aspect.
It's just, you know, it's a 40year old gift and it's also in
like mint condition.
That's what's so cool about it.
It's still pristine.
So not an autographed baseball,it's not a ticket stub, it's
(12:09):
not a rookie card in mintcondition.
It's a bar mitzvah gift from myfour favorite teams at the time
, which, by the way, they stillare.
And I will admit, I'm still aWizards fan.
Bullets now, wizards yeah, thatwas a pretty bad team back then
, but they participated.
So credit to all those proteams for making that happen.
(12:31):
So thanks, mom, for the awesomebar mitzvah gift.
I'm giving you props on that.
Some 40 years later, reallyappreciate it.
So, that being said, what arewhat's your favorite sports
memorabilia piece?
You can comment, you can sharethis, you can.
You can email me, you canmessage me.
(12:53):
I'd love to hear what yourfavorite sports memorabilia
piece is.
But that is going to do it forthis edition of SoundOff with
SyncOff.
I want to thank you so much forjoining me Again.
Soundoff, sponsored by theSyncOff Realty Group right here
in Del Mar, for all of yourbuying and selling of real
estate needs.
I will see you next time.
(13:14):
Make sure you check out all theprevious podcasts and the
future ones, because I don'tknow when the heck you're
watching this.
But have a great day everyone.
Thanks again for watching.
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