There's been a lot of discussion in the past about Coach's Corner, and the fact that they seem to routinely sell autographed baseballs of guys like Josh Gibson, Amos Rusie, Jim Thorpe, etc. -- balls that should be worth tens of thousands of dollars if real, but typically sell in the high hundreds. There's also been a lot of discussion in the past about the fact that SCD lends credibility to Coach's Corner by running their multi-page ads twice a month.

I had always assumed that SCD agreed to run Coach's Corner's ads for one simple reason -- SCD needed the money. But I noticed today that the connection between SCD and Coach's Corner appears to run much deeper.

Coach's Corner's autographs are usually authenticated by Stat Authentic. The Amos Rusie in their current auction is authenticated by Stat, as are dozens of others. Who operates Stat? It turns out that one of the two owners / authenticators is Ted Taylor. Ted Taylor writes for SCD. In fact, he writes "news" stories for SCD about Coach's Corner's auctions. The stories he writes are full of fawning praise, using phrases like "fully certified" to describe the autographs in the auction. Coach's Corner uses the same phrase in its ads, so it may be that the "news" stories are actually written by Coach's Corner, with Ted Taylor's name just added by SCD. There's also a link on Stat's website to Coach's Corner's auctions.

So, the bottom line is that we have seemingly fraudulent material, authenticated by an SCD writer, advertised in SCD, and promoted by the authenticator in SCD's "news" stories. Am I the last person to notice this?

There may be a good explanation for all this. I'd sure like to hear it. I had always assumed Ted Taylor was one of the good guys.