Vintage Baseball Glove Forum

Greg pictured an interesting vintage glove in the "glove of the month" section for January. It sold for $156 on ebay. It piqued my interest because it had what appeared to be out-seams on the fingers. I was going to include it with my other posts of out-seam gloves. One of the cloth patches had a patent number the seller listed as 960560. I thought it may yield some information but that number didn't bring up anything glove related. I looked at the picture of the cloth patch closer and saw the seller had gotten the patent wrong, it was 980560. That patent was for the 1911 Ratsch duck web. I looked through the ebay pictures again and saw the ragged edge around the fingers was actually the finger webs that had been cut out and that the out-seam was just a remnant of the original duck web. I don't think the glove is a Ratsch/Peerless model but rather a Simmons brand that had licensed the patent from Ratsch. The manufacturer's cloth patch is worn but the logo in the palm of the glove is similar to a Simmons. Also the Simmons brand has a thumb seam on the front while the Ratsch/Peerless has a one piece face. Simmons Hardware was interesting in that the mail order company put out catalogs of 2000+ pages. They merged with Winchester in the 1920's and were bought out by their arch rival, Shapleigh's Hardware in the 1940's

Interesting! Thanks for sharing. I didn't buy the glove but wonder if it could possibly be repaired/restored to it's original duckiness. What do you think Dr. Number9?

Great detective work, Mike! It did cross my mind that it could have had a duck web that was cut down because the remaining seams were so uneven. Good to have someone on the forum with the knowledge to find that out.

The restoring of the glove is difficult because a new web cannot be butted to the edge of the existing fragmented web remnant. Luckily the out-seams are still intact so the inside finger stall seams would have to be undone and new webs inserted and the finger stalls re-sewn. The outward appearance would ultimately be good but quite a laborious process. Without seeing the glove up close, this is my solution. William has a lot more experience at this. Maybe he has some other way.

Mike beat me to it. It could be fixed, but the outward appearance would not be like that of an original. Personally, I think it's very cool as is. I love period modifications like this. Someone didn't like it the way it was made so they improvised a solution to make it work. I like that.

I have a feeling something is going on with the lining based on the way the laces along the heel are arranged. Actually, I don't believe that model should have heel lacing.

William is right about the heel lacing. it is meant to be a sewn heel. The piping came undone and as a quick fix someone laced the heel closed again. I have a donor mitt with the same leather type and color of the glove to use for the webs and the little bit of piping repair. Don't cringe too much William. maybe it won't be a totally half-assed project on my part. The glove was originally white or a mouse color. One would never guess that by the ebay pictures. The insides are pretty nice and soft even though the glove was played pretty hard. The exterior is also surprisingly supple, maybe a calfskin.

I say go for it. It's already been modified once. Why not try to "modify" it back to what it was originally?

Mike, I didn't realize you were the one who picked it up. Congrats. Very cool glove. Looking forward to seeing the transformation.

Hi Mike,

Looks to be an interesting observation on the old glove. If you add a duck webbing I would like to see it when you get it completed. Now if we begin to see a bunch of the duck webs showing up on ebay we will know who to ask about them.
Dave

My thinking is like Greg's. Modified once, modified again! And Dave's observation is funny and interesting in that the history of a restored glove is always carried around with it, sometimes like a lead weight. Would the $33,000 Spalding fingerless glove gone for that price if the picture of the unrestored early version of the glove from the 1999 Sotheby auction was readily available? When it burst upon the scene recently, it seemed so perfect and fresh with nothing to compare it to. The perfect marketing strategy.