From the Ironwood Daily Globe 1920 March 10

How Bambino's Pen Got In Coal Still Mystery

How Babe Ruth's fountain pen ever got into Gus Dittmore's coal pile is still a mystery. Last week Gus was about to heave a shovel of coal into his furnace when he noticed a Wirt fountain pen in the anthracite. Examination showed it belonged to the Bambino. It had been presented to him by Boy Scouts of Burlington Iowa last summer.

The Babe was notified and now he says Gus will get an Autographed baseball for the return of his pen. Babe said that the pen had become lost on a St. Louis-New York train last August.

In a letter from St. petersburg, where Ruth is in spring training, he believes the pen, in some unaccountable manner, was whisked from his coat pocket into a coal car attached to a train that passed his coach near the Ohio-Pennsylvania State line. Gus Dittmore's coal was mined in Virginia, shipped by rail to Toledo, Ohio and then by boat to Menomineo.