Endorsed vs. Block Letter

[softball66]

Col. Dave Grob has tackled the issue of the famous H&B court case against Hanna Bat Company for Hanna's alleged violation of H&B's rights to use of players names on bats.
We all have seen the gloves with the players' names in block letters, followed by "Model", "Type," "Style" etc. But Grob brings some fresh information to the discussion, namely that
of a similar alleged case of Wilson against Globe Sporting Goods.>>>
http://www.mearsonline.com/news/newsDetail.asp?id=750

[vintagebrett]

Thanks for sharing the link. I always think about this type of case when looking at my OK gloves - many of them have block letter names of big time players - Williams, Musial, DiMaggio, Ruth, Dean, etc. - I always assumed the block letters were a way to capitalize on the names while the signature endorsers (Doerr, Wyatt, Hughson) were actually under contract with the company.

[Mr. Mitt]

The most important fact I learned from his piece is that H&B was producing 2,000,000 bats per year for retail sale versus 40,000 for professional players. Doesn't it seem like an inordinate amount of professional "game used" bats have survived compared with store models given that 98% of what was manufactured was not for professional use? Basically, MEARS is stating... coming right out and telling their customers, that 98% of bats submitted for evaluation with them should NOT be considered "game used". I've stayed away from the "game used" segment of the hobby and this simply reconfirms my stance. They must not think too highly of their customers' intelligence to brazenly come out and quote these statistics. I'll stick with store model gloves, thank you.

[DaveGrob]

Dear Mr. Mitt,

With respect to your comments, observations and opinion of what MEARS is “coming right out and telling their customers,” I respectfully submit to you and the readers of the forum that you are mistaken.

First and foremost, we feel that our members, readers, and customers are very intelligent individuals who are looking for information to support their own research and individual purchase decisions. As such, they are looking for data and information that is not anecdotal in nature. When it was debated how much weight a bat might loose or gain over time, MEARS did not speculate. Rather, we went to Baseball Research Center at the University of Massachusetts (Lowell-Department of Engineering) to get their take on this subject and published those findings. When their was speculation and conjecture about how much weight a bat would loose if you had to hand sand 3/8th of an inch off it, we actually conducted an experiment on this subject and published those results. When our readers were curious about the weight difference between the fabrics used in baseball uniforms over time, we conducted an experiment to assess fabric weight and heat and moisture retention and then published those results. When collectors asked about the differences in quality between professional grade flannel fabrics and lesser grades, we provided information on fabric weave analysis and showed them the difference via the fabric weave under a digital microscope. Our members, readers and customers are very intelligent people and we are glad for that. Since 2004, we have published over 700 articles to this end and to service this community and their appetite for information.

With respect to your comment that we are telling our customers or the larger collecting community that 98% of the bats they are submitting are retail offerings, this could not be further from the truth. We feel, as I stated above that our members, readers, and customers are intelligent enough to figure out that this 98% includes small souvenir bats, commemorative offerings and bats that are readily identifiable as retail products by the markings their either exhibit or are missing.

The data I cited was from 1940. At the time, there were only 16 major league teams. Assuming a 26 man roster that equates to some 416 players, and allowing for call ups lets round this up to 500. Are we saying that these 500 players used on average 80 bats a season? No we are not. Consider the quantities reflected in the personal player bat records for the 1940 season:

Luke Appling-45
Joe Cronin-27
Bill Dickey-27
Joe DiMaggio-36
Jimmy Foxx-48
Charlie Gehringer-11
Hank Greenberg-44

This averages out to 34 bats per player. Where did the rest of the 40,000 go? Professional baseball also included the minor leagues. According Baseball Reference.com, there were some 159 minor league affiliates.

Boston Bees (5)
Boston Red Sox (8)
Brooklyn Dodgers (18)
Chicago Cubs (6)
Chicago White Sox (5)
Cincinnati Reds (7)
Cleveland Indians (10)
Detroit Tigers (6)
New York Giants (7)
New York Yankees (14)
Philadelphia A’s (4)
Philadelphia Phillies (8)
Pittsburgh Pirates (10)
St. Louis Browns (11)
St. Louis Cardinals (31)
Washington Senators (9)

These teams/players used a combination of professional quality product and retail offerings. Retail offerings have been confirmed through examples sent to H&B for duplication. You also have to factor in the H&B was not alone in producing product for both professional and retail use.

I lay all of this out not so much to account for 40,000 bats, but to show what both MEARS and our members, readers, and customers are looking for and thinking about when considering product from this period. I also don’t feel the number of professional model bats is “inordinately high” as you profess. Unless you are tracking bats, you are likely to be counting the same bat over and over again as it moves through the hobby/industry.

To highlight this, let’s consider Joe DiMaggio as being one, if not the most famous player of the period around 1940. This is someone we would expect to see bats survive of based on popularity and significance. Yes, even at this point in time there was a market for DiMaggio bats. During his 1941 56 game hitting streak, DiMaggio actually had a gamer stolen (subsequently found and returned). DiMaggio’s single season order in 1940 from H&B was for at least 36 bats. I say at least as there is a possibility of bats ordered for him by the team. In the MEARS bat census, we show ourselves as only evaluating 16 of his bats over a period spanning his entire career. DiMaggio’s personal order records indicate H&B orders of at least 463 bats over his career time frame (1933-1951 orders that included those from the Pacific Coast League). The MEARS data only accounts for about 3% of this total. Let’s double or triple this accounting for bats that are out there but not evaluated by MEARS. This would still be a survival rate of between 6%-9% for H&B bats made for the most famous player of the time and ones that are very likely to be saved. If a 3%-9% survival rate of bats from likely the most popular or desirable player from 1940 is “inordinate,” I would ask that you share your data and supporting metrics of evaluation so that we all may benefit from this.

This is clearly longer for a typical board post and I apologize for that. But I felt it was necessary to refute the comments that MEARS questions the intelligence of our members, readers, and customers. Folks, this is the type of information they look for. Tied directly to this why MEARS and our members, readers, and customers likely do not feel that 98% of the bats they buy or submit for evaluation are likely to be store models any more than they feel the supply is inordinately high.

Respectfully Yours,

LTC (R) Dave Grob
Editor-MEARS On Line
DaveGrob1@aol.com

[GloveCrazy]

It's easy to talk about this stuff in the abstract but how about some data (just kidding). I appreciated the detail in the initial post, and in the responses. Thanks for the discussion.

[vintagebrett]

I'm simply amazed there are still trees left in this country! 2 millions bats a year. Wow.

Dave, am I right to assume that most people sending bats to you already can tell the difference between a store model and professional model bat. And you would tell them the difference before evaluating so they wouldn't waste their money, correct? Unfortunately for game used glove collectors, there aren't as many tell tale signs to signify pro vs. store model.

Would love to see some glove statistics from that time to see how the production numbers compare. If similar, I'm surprised there are still cows left.

[DaveGrob]

Brett,

With the amount of information related to bats, especially those produced by Hillerich and Bradsby, the number of bats submitted and identified as store or retail model bats is fairly low. Collectors, and the community writ large, still struggles with the lesser known manufacturers and we have devoted a significant amount of our editorial time to address this over the years. Your question about telling collectors and saving them money is part of why we research, write and publish. This does however remind me of an incident at show back in the 2002-2003 time frame.

A collector came up to me with a George Brett bat and asked how much it would cost to authenticate it. I told him the price of the fee (I think about $75 at the time) and informed him the fee would exceed the value of the bat since it was clearly a store model bat. I told him that there was a dealer at the show who had copies of a reference that would enable him to see this for himself at the cost of around $15.00. I was dumbfounded when he said that was too much to pay for such a book. Here we had someone who was willing to pay $75 to have someone tell him something he could have seen for himself for $15.00. Go figure.

I’ll see if I can find any production numbers. If I turn up anything, I’ll let you know.

v/r

Dave Grob
DaveGrob1@aol.com

[Mr. Mitt]

Dave… I appreciate you coming on the forum to defend yourself. I thought my exaggerated example of the cited data was clear, but I was mistaken. Obviously, 98% of the bats coming in for evaluation wouldn’t be store model. That said, the “game used” segment of the sports memorabilia hobby, or business depending on your perspective, has serious issues that I don’t want to involve myself with. I’ve heard about and actually observed shenanigans that keeps me clear of “game used” items of all kinds. It’s my view, as well as many others’, and it will not change. I don’t care to comment about it further.

[murphusa]

One of the reasons that H&B bats have so much information available to colector is that over the years H&B opened their books up to alot of us in the business and let us do research.

This is not something that has happened with other companies

[vintagebrett]

Dave Grob was kind enough to follow up my question about glove production with some interesting statistics:

http://www.mearsonline.com/news/newsDetail.asp?id=751

I'm dumbfounded by the numbers - would never have guessed that many were produced.

[softball66]

Well, one never knows where a thread will lead but, again, we've had some good input and, I think,some honest opinions ventured.
Some points that Col. Grob brought out probably deserve some further elaboration. Lefties vs. Right hand thrower gloves. Nocona exec informed me that they used to provide about 9 or 8 to 1 ratio on ball gloves, right to left, which fits the national pattern of 9 to 1 persons studies of left handed people vs. right handed and bearing that out. It was about 7 to 1 on first base mitts and of course very few left handed throwing catchers mitts compared to the righties.
We also know that the youth market for gloves probably ran into about the same heavy ratio to the adult sizes, but this is just a surmise. We do know how tough the personal models or the very top of the line gloves -- throughout glove history -- are to find. So, the autograph and signature youth models probably dominated the gross sales for gloves at a very high ratio. I learned from Elmer Blasco at Rawlings that during his tenure there, three Rawlings player endorsers: Marty Marion, Stan Musial and Mickey Mantle received a percentage of sales on their retail model gloves. This may have been also true at Wilson, Spalding and MacGregor during the 1940s to 1960s.
I advised Dave Grob that either the NSGA or SGMA sporting goods groups may have sales figures on retail bats v. gloves. Dave was probably right about percentage of gloves to bats. On most of the sandlot teams I played on, we had one or two (team) bats, but most of us had our own gloves. Bats were cheaper to buy on the whole. Of course the bats would break and have to be replaced whereas the gloves lasted several seasons or more. Again, the sporting goods associations may have the breakdowns on these.
I remember visiting with a sporting goods executive years ago telling me about their leather products sales telling me that 22 players, one football.. . .18 players, 18 baseball gloves.
Right now a subject for a lot of extrapolation of the figures and data we have.
Dave does a good followup on gloves on the MEARS site recommended by Brett.

[softball66]

Here's Col. Grob's thoughts on the Gold Glove Award which Elmer Blasco helped institute for Rawlings in 1957.
http://www.mearsonline.com/news/newsDetail.asp?id=752