The rare find could command between $80,000 and $120,000 at auction.

BOSTON (AP) -The wool is the color of cream and soft to the touch. The hand-stitched letters on the front, the number on the back and the piping are still fire-engine red. The seven white buttons sparkle.

The baseball uniform- jersey and pants – looks brand-new, but its condition belies the fact that it is 45 years old and is believed to have been worn by Boston Red Sox icon Ted Williams.

The uniform, which has spent most of its life tucked away in the drawer of an old dresser in the attic of a Gloucester home, is expected to fetch from $80,000 to $120,000 at auction on June 6.

“Uniforms like this are so rare and so difficult to price, especially in a condition like this,” said Stuart P. Whitehurst, vice president of Skinner, the auction company conducting the sale.

An Ernie Banks uniform recently sold at auction for $25,000. With no disrespect meant to the former Chicago Cubs great, Ted Williams “has a certain cachet,” Whitehurst said. “He was not just a great American ballplayer, he was a great American war hero.”

Williams played for the Red Sox from 1939 to 1960. He is the last player to break the .400 barrier, hitting .406 in 1941, and has the fifth highest career batting average in the history of the majors at .344.

His career twice was interrupted by military service. In World War II, he trained to fly fighter planes, but never saw combat. He flew 39 combat missions during the Korean War, and his jet was twice hit by enemy fire.

The uniform’s owner is retired Gloucester physician Robert Jedrey. He was given the uniform in 1959 by Al Oliver, a friend of his father’s who was the superintendent at Braves Field in Boston, home of the Boston Braves. Jedrey does not know how Oliver got it.

“I can remember seeing it, trying it on, and that was it,” said Jedrey, who was in medical school at the time.

Williams hit a career-low .254 that season and asked for, and was granted, a pay cut. He hit .316 the next season, his last.

Jedrey folded the uniform into a paper bag, tucked it in a dresser drawer in the attic of his mother’s home, and forgot about it for almost three decades.

Jedrey was reminded of it in the late 1980s when Williams and Joe DiMaggio made a joint appearance at Fenway Park.

“I hadn’t thought about it whatsoever in years,” said Jedrey, a Red Sox fan who played baseball at Gloucester High School, Deerfield Academy and Amherst College, where he was captain his senior year. “So I went into the attic, opened the drawer, and in the bag was a pristine Ted Williams uniform.”

He took it to the Sports Museum of New England where curator Richard Johnson examined it.

“There was no doubt in my mind … it was a magnificently preserved Ted Williams uniform,” said Johnson, who helped authenticate it, then put it on display at the museum. “It was one of the most beautiful items I had seen.”

The material, the stitching, the size, the cut, the labels, are all consistent with other Ted Williams uniforms Johnson had seen at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Perhaps the best indication that the uniform is genuine is the length of the sleeves, Johnson said. While the sleeves on most uniforms of that era reach to the elbow, Williams had his sleeves tailored shorter.

The shirt, which has a 46-inch chest, is lightly soiled around the collar and bears the label of Tim McAuliffe, the manufacturer of Red Sox uniforms in the late 1950s. It also has a label with the number 59, indicating the year.

The name Ted Williams’ is stitched inside the waistband of the pants, which have a 38-inch waist and 29-inch inseam. The pants also bear the McAuliffe and 59′ labels. The inside of the waistband has a light red tinge to it, probably from the red clay of Fenway Park’s infield, indicating that the uniform was worn on the diamond.

“It didn’t get heavy use, but it got use,” Johnson said.

Jedrey, 72, decided to sell the uniform now because of the increased interest in Williams since his death and cryonic freezing in July 2002 and with the excitement surrounding the 2004 Red Sox. The $80,000 to $120,00 the uniform is expected to get is consistent with what other Williams uniforms have sold for at auction, said T.S. O’Connell, the editor of Wisconsin-based Sports Collectors Digest magazine, who said he has not seen the uniform. A Williams uniform from 1941, when he batted .406, sold for more than $120,000 in 2000. A 1946 uniform Williams wore in the World Series sold for $107,000 and a 1957 jersey alone sold for almost $82,000 shortly after his death.

The most paid for a baseball uniform at auction appears to be the more than $451,000 an anonymous buyer spent in 1999 for a Lou Gehrig uniform that it is believed he wore during his famous farewell speech. Gehrig, dying from a rare neurological disorder, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, said goodbye to fans in a moving speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939.

Jedrey and Whitehurst would like to see the Williams uniform sold to someone who is going to put it on public display, such as the Red Sox, or a museum.

But at auction, there is no guarantee.

“There is a risk it may go to a private collector and the public will be denied access, and that would be a shame,” Whitehurst said.

The Red Sox are aware of the auction, according to spokesman Charles Steinberg, although he said it is unclear whether anyone within the organization plans to bid on it.