Great Western Sporting Goods

[okdoak]

Anyone know if there was a connection between Great Western and Western (the company that Wilson took over)? GW was based in Chicago as was Wilson, but that's about all I know. Then again so were Spalding and Dubow. No info online that I can find on GW. Anybody have any?

[mikesglove]

Western Sporting Goods seemed to be mainly a uniform manufacturer that Thomas E. Wilson merged with in 1925 as Wilson-Western. Wilson-Western changed their name to Wilson Sporting Goods in 1931. Wilson Sporting Goods was determined to be the dominant uniform supplier for the major leagues. Below is an ad from 1922 while the companies were independent but had a distribution agreement.


Great Western Athletic Goods was probably an independent company existing in the 1930's in Chicago. As a corporation of Illinois, they secured their own patent for a playground ball in 1936 and in 1937 were chosen as the supplier of all athletic goods for Cornell University. This included a variety of sports. Below are two Great Western ads from 1936



Below is a page from a 1936 Great Western catalog.




Great Western Athletic Goods were not manufacturers but distributors. They advertised as carrying a line of Louisville Slugger bats and Bancroft tennis rackets. Although their baseball gloves were imprinted with the GW logo, it seems possible that Wilson was a supplier. Here are some Great Western gloves with some earmarks of Wilson manufacture.
Model 614 below.

Model below similar to the Wilson "Red Ruffing" 3-finger glove.


An interesting stamp on the back of the wrist strap of the glove above states "Guaranteed Genuine Top grain Velvotan". The description was also used in the ad for the 1936 "Flexform" glove above and later found on many 1950's Sonnett gloves.


The last address of Great Western Athletic Goods was 3605 W. Arthington, Chicago. from the 1936 ads. it is now a park

[okdoak]

Thanks for the info Mike! All I knew about GW was that they carried interesting gloves in their line. Here are a couple more pages from their 1936 catalog. The joined finger model made me think of Wilson's Sarge Connally and I know that Wilson held the patent on that design. But their Bud Hafey with the laced fingers made me think of the Reach gloves that I've seen photos of Lefty Grove and Wes Ferrel using. Still haven't found a catalog page showing a Reach with laced fingers from that era, though. Sure wouldn't mind coming across that Connally looking glove. Thanks again.

[mikesglove]

In addition to the Rip Radcliff and Lou Fonseca "Flexform" gloves, here are some other interesting models of 1936.
A Mel Almada glove with the "Flexform" pinky

A cool Bruce Ogrodowski model with a double row of snaps on the wrist strap.

A ventilated Professional model from 1938.

[mikesglove]

A 1936 Great Western Rip Radcliff model 524 glove with "Flexform Fingers" recently sold on ebay.