[caption id="attachment_745" align="alignright" width="199" caption="My little box"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/20110110_14.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-745" title="20110110_14" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/20110110_14-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="199" height="300" /></a>[/caption]

It's a little box, hanging on my wall, with 12 nearly pristine looking baseballs.

There are 13 signatures on the balls, and 10 of them are in the baseball Hall of Fame. One other one probably will be someday, and the remaining two -- the ones who share a ball -- also shared one of the most important moments in baseball history.

The three across the top row are the true gems -- Ted Williams, Joe Dimaggio and Mickey Mantle.

The next three aren't much lesser lights -- Johnny Bench, Warren Spahn and Duke Snider.

Bob Feller, Mike Schmidt and Brooks Robinson occupy the third row, which is 9-for-9 Hall of Famers.

Chipper Jones and Ralph Kiner have the outside spots on the bottom row. Kiner is in the Hall already, and my guess is Chipper will be in about six or seven years.

It's the 12th ball that is the most fascinating to me. It contains the signatures of Ralph Branca and Bobby Thomson, the man who threw the pitch and the man who hit it in 1951 for the Shot Heard Round the World. Despite Bill Mazeroski and  Kirk Gibson's later efforts, I still think it was the biggest home run in baseball history.

My interest in memorabilia has come relatively late in life. I never asked for autographs when I was a sportswriter. It would have been unprofessional, and because of that, I missed out on the chance to get signatures from former players I met for one-on-one interviews, among them Jim Palmer, Catfish Hunter and Hank Aaron.

I do have one autographed picture on my wall, of my old friend Walter Masterson as the starting pitcher for the American League in the 1948 All-Star Game.

I miss Walter a lot. We were working on a book together, but didn't get a chance to finish it before he died in April 2008. The picture is a nice memento.

It's just like on my Facebook page, before they revised the profiles. I used to say that I loved my wife, my children, my granddaughter, my family, my friends ... and baseball.