Autographed baseballs provide window into Henderson woman’s life well-lived

This is a story about 14 autographed baseballs, 336 framed photographs and one love, shared by a Henderson woman and her late husband.

At first, it was just going to be about the autographed baseballs.

I have sort of known Lorelle Ellis since John Robinson coached football at UNLV. Around 2000, is my best guess. For the longest time, I knew her only as "Lormi" - her email name. A combination of Lorelle and as I would discover later, Mike, her second husband.

When Robinson was coach, they started the Rebel Pride Clothing Company. The business did not make money, probably because Lorelle had this habit of printing up jerseys with the players' numbers on the back and giving them away to their family members.

So if you ever see a guy at Terrible Herbst sporting a No. 34 jersey from the John Robinson Era, chances are it is Joe Haro's uncle.

Lorelle and Mike Ellis sold the business, but you still can see the original trailer parked in front of Sam Boyd Stadium or the Thomas & Mack Center on game nights. And she continued to send me email, even after Mike got sick.

Leukemia.

And after Mike died on Oct. 28, 2010, and Lorelle eventually got around to going through his things, she came across his autographed baseball collection. She had learned of my fondness for baseball through our emails, and she wanted me to have the collection.

No, I wrote. I couldn't possibly accept something that must have meant so much to her husband. No, she wrote back. Mike would have wanted a fan like me to have those baseballs.  

When I said no again, she wrote to ask whether I would at least come by and take a look at them, perhaps help her figure out a few of the signatures? And I wrote, yes, I could do that.

So we agreed on a time and something came up, and then we agreed on another time and then something came up again. Until a couple of weeks ago, when I finally put a pleasant face to hundreds of emails and met Lorelle Ellis at her home.

Let me start by saying though this thoroughly modern woman will be 74 this month, she looks 20 years younger, probably because she took up running after beating breast cancer. It has been about 15 years since she last ran a half-marathon, but she looks fit enough to still do it.

And that this was no ordinary autographed baseball collection.

Bob Gibson, Bob Feller, Stan Musial, Warren Spahn, Phil Rizzuto, Whitey Ford, Johnny Podres, Don Larsen, Bobby Richardson, Bill "Moose" Skowron ... you could almost smell freshly mown infield grass on the dining room table.

There was a personal inscription on a ball that had turned pale yellow that at first was hard to read - Duke Snider - and another, on a pristine pearl white baseball, that we couldn't decipher at all.

Lorelle must have put in a call to Bob Costas or something because that night in her email she wrote that this signature - the handwriting on the ball - belonged to Gil McDougald, the 1951 American League Rookie of the Year, six-time All-Star and five-time World Series champion with the Yankees. The Gil McDougald who hit a line drive that shattered Herb Score's eye socket in 1957.

Gil McDougald died on Nov. 28, 2010 - exactly one month after Mike Ellis died of leukemia.

And when Lorelle Ellis insisted I see the rest of her home, I couldn't help but notice all these framed photographs of her and Mike, covering the walls in the manner the tarpaulin covers the infield at Yankee Stadium during a rain delay.

They had been high school sweethearts in the Bay Area that had gone separate ways, mostly because she was Jewish and he was not. And later in life, when that didn't matter, they met again and spent 15 years together. And though Mike was sick for 10 of those years, he battled like crazy, and they were 15 wonderful years.

Before I could finish asking the question, Lorelle Ellis answered it: There are 336 framed photographs of her and Mike on the walls.

I wonder how many times has she counted them since he died?

No disrespect to The Duke and Stan the Man and Whitey Ford, but that seemed like the story I should write - even if tonight is the All-Star Game.

I told Lorelle Ellis she should sell those baseballs on eBay if they are taking up space, that they probably are worth a lot of money to a collector or maybe Bob Costas.

But she could see that I had my eye on that Bob Gibson ball. She said she would set that one aside and sell it last.         

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.