Ted Williams Sears Glove

[softball66]

I just had an interesting response to a description of a Sear Ted Willliams
glove I posted recently on eBay. I, frankly, had not looked up the date of
Williams lucrativet contract with retail coilussus Sears. I'm sure it's turned out to be 1962. My ebay questioner (posted below) correctly brought up that the contract was after Ted's retirement but I'm not sure of Ted's motives about a dispute with his previous endorsement company, Wilson. I think Ted had some reasons, including financial and fishing, for selecting Sears. At any rate, here's the question I received from a fairly knowledgeable glove and leather person. Oh, and I think he was confusing the raw leather lining with the vinyl type leather that many companies used later, with the "cracking" problem.
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"You sound like you'd know better than me, but my understanding was that Ted signed with Sears in 196o after he retired because of a dispute with Wilson (the glove maker whom he endorsed and the glove he used during his career--in the late 40s and 50s at least). And Sears offered him a ton more money. And, as you mentioned,since Ted was a sportsman of several sorts,all the fishing, hunting, etc., gear he wanted for life (which Wilson could not). The inside of that glove does have a synthetic leather compound over cloth...but it wasn't just cost, it also had to do with making the glove a little lighter and less liable to cracking and chaffing inside from sweaty/salty hands. The soft leather (underbelly of the horse then cow, after horse leather was banned in the 1940s) normally used inside Wilson, Rawlings, Nokona, etc., gloves could be used on other products, instead of baseball gloves, as well, by Sears. It had little to do wtih location since all made gloves in the Far East by then."

[Number9]

The unfinished leather in your Williams glove is most likely a cowhide split, not synthetic. Splits are leather that start as a thick hide, from the shoulders to the rump, and are then cut in thickness to produce two thinner leathers. In a hypothetical situation, the top grain half of the split leather would be used to make the exterior of the glove and the flesh side of the split is used to make the lining. Because the split half no longer has a grain, sometimes a vinyl layer is added to the leather which can then be heat embossed giving it the appearance of a leather grain. The Williams glove may have had that coating fresh from the factory. Unless it is left uncoated, anything older than a modern glove that uses a split hide is usually compromised in some way. The coatings had a tendency to crack or peel off.

Splits are also commonly found on upholstery leather and car interiors. If it's sold as "real leather" but it has an opaque color or painted appearance, it's a split. If you can see a scar or some other imperfection, it's the real deal.

[softball66]

This is unfinished split. No inner meshing. I assume Sears was trying to save a little money on the lining. I don't think it has any properties of preventing salts or acids from hand sweating.