Cleaning and restoring sports memorabilia: Major League Baseball uniforms

Ron Davis is a former Major League Baseball pitcher who played from 1978 to 1988.

Davis played for the New York Yankees (1978-1981) and the Minnesota Twins (1982-1986) of the American League and for the Chicago Cubs (1986-1987), Los Angeles Dodgers (1987) and San Francisco Giants (1988) of the National League.

In 1981, he made the American League All Star team.

In 2011, Davis rediscovered his New York Yankees equipment bag that had been in storage for almost 30 years. The equipment bag contained, amongst other memorabilia, 3 jackets from his days as a pitcher for the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants.

There was just one problem: Rats had eaten through his equipment bag and had nested amongst his jackets. As a result, the jackets were covered in rat feces and rat urine.

Davis decided to entrust those jackets to for cleaning and restoration.

The transformation 

The results of the transformation can be seen in the following BEFORE and AFTER photographs:

For even more BEFORE and AFTER photographs on the transformation of these 3 jackets and the equipment bag, please view our slide show below:

To view this slide show on a full screen, hit the X button with the arrow tips.

Photo credit: phillipscollection.org/Marjorie Phillips