Sports Memorabilia Show Promoter Pleads Guilty

A sports memorabilia show promoter, who was charged with writing bad checks to such sports celebrities as Mickey Mantle, Ernie Banks and the Dodgers’ Steve Garvey and Don Drysdale, has pleaded guilty.

Paul Howard Hammack, 44, who called himself Ernest Dent when he organized a memorabilia show that attracted thousands of fans to the Pasadena Center in September, 1990, entered the plea Friday in Pasadena Superior Court to 19 felony counts and one misdemeanor.

Pasadena police estimated that celebrities, vendors and about 400 memorabilia collectors lost more than $200,000 at the show. Under a plea bargain agreement, Hammack will be sentenced Dec. 11 to five years and eight months in prison, Deputy Dist. Atty. Nancy M. Naftel said. Hammack had faced a maximum sentence of eight years. He will serve the sentence concurrently with an unrelated eight-year federal prison sentence he is now serving.