Author Hopes His Book Becomes the Bible for Bat Collectors : Hobby: Riddell’s guide tells how to identify and price Hillerich & Bradsby and Adirondack models.

It is not expected to hit the bestsellers list any time soon, but Bill Riddell’s guide to collecting professional game-used bats has apparently struck a chord with the hard-core collector.

In two days at the national sports collectors’ convention in St. Louis, Riddell sold out of 200 debut copies of “Bats--Professional Hillerich & Bradsby and Adirondack, 1950-1994.” Though neither the title nor the subject matter appear captivating on the surface, Riddell says the relatively new hobby of bat collecting is anything but boring.

“People like challenges,” said Riddell, 39, a junior high school teacher in Costa Mesa. “Collecting baseball cards is easy. You know where you can find them and there are so many of them. There’s very few secrets. Most of them you can find in five minutes.

“When people realized how tough it is to find some of these bats, they start finding it exciting. This is for people who really love the game. Plus, you can’t swing a card.”

Riddell worked with co-authors Vince Malta, Ron Fox and Michael Specht on the yearlong project.

“It really started with four guys sitting around and saying there’s no information on this stuff,” Riddell said. “I hope somewhere along the line the disseminating of information about the hobby helps dealers and collectors and people who might want to start out on the hobby but don’t know how to go about it.”

Essentially, Riddell and his partners have catalogued 125 bats of players, many of them Hall of Famers, by model number, weight range, length range, price range and by availability.

Some players, such as Brooks Robinson, have 19 bats in the book. The book covers 13 labeling periods for Hillerich & Bradsby and 10 periods for Adirondack bats. The rarest and most desirable bat in the book is a Joe DiMaggio model that sells for between $8,000 and $12,000. Some current and common players’ bats sell for $10-25.

But Riddell says the book is only a guideline. It tells readers how to identify and price certain bats and about how many of them are in circulation, but the rest is essentially up to the collector. There is a chapter that includes names of other dealers and sites of auctions where bats are sold, but Riddell says the hobbies’ real intrigue is in the chase.

Riddell has been chasing down his favorite players’ bats for five years and has 60 in his collection. His goal is to find the bat of every Hall of Famer who played in the 1960s. So far Riddell has 22 bats for his collection.

A Duke Snider bat is one of three Riddell doesn’t have and he’s beginning to wonder if he’ll ever find one.

“If you tell me you need a Duke Snider bat from the ‘50s, I don’t know of one,” he said.

Riddell said he only knew of five bats of recent Hall of Fame inductee Richie Ashburn, but he somehow located one and bought it for $1,760. He bought several of his bats from the former bat boy of the 1958 Washington Senators. All of them were broken, but Riddell said collectors buy hard-use bats, light- use bats and cracked bats.

In that 1958 collection, Riddell bought the bats of Al Kaline, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Enos Slaughter and Nellie Fox. The Mantle bat is the only such-labeled Adirondack bat known.

How much is it worth?

“Well into four figures,” he said.

Riddell’s book isn’t quite that popular or expensive. It goes for $24.95 and you can buy it at Whiz Kids cards and memorabilia store in Costa Mesa.