"It was important for his textbook to come back to the Liverpool museum to be there, in memory, forever." "He knew that he could sell the Babe Ruth autograph, and many people told him that as well, but he said the money wasn't important to him," she said. Linda Rafuse, manager of the Queens County Museum, is glad he did. "I'm 93-years-old and I've got to depart with many things eventually, and I'd like them to go where they'd be appreciated the most." And, of course, I grew up in Liverpool," he said. "I brought it back because I have five grandsons, and one cannot give a book of such a nature to all the grandsons. Nickerson made the trip from Toronto with his two daughters. Nickerson donated the book and the autograph to the Queens County Museum, which plans on making it part of its baseball display. The book Ruth signed was a copy of The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, which Nickerson was reading for his Grade 7 class. Give my friend your autograph.' And he passed the book and Babe signed it and he said 'It's the first time I've autographed a book!' " And we walked up to the post office steps and he said, 'Hey, Babe. "I said, 'I'd like to have his autograph,' and one of my chums, a boy called Melan Sapp says 'Gimme your book, come with me'. Nickerson, who's now 93 and lives in Toronto, returned to Liverpool last week to donate an autograph which Babe Ruth gave him that day. He looked like the many pictures I'd seen of Babe Ruth. "He had high-laced boots and britches and a jacket and he was a very large man, but I was the one who recognized him immediately. "He was dressed as a hunter," Nickerson remembered. So it came as a shock to then 11-year-old Granville Nickerson when he and his friends spotted the baseball superstar standing on the steps of the Liverpool, N.S., post office.
In 1933, few celebrities were as well known - or as recognizable - as Babe Ruth.