Ted A. Kennedy's High Art Sporting Goods

[mikesglove]

It must be from an actual '94 catalog and not the appreviated baseball guides. It's cool! Shows why it was $10 back in the day. A lot of work went into it!

[mikesglove]

It must be from an actual '94 catalog and not the appreviated baseball guides. It's cool! Shows why it was $10 back in the day. A lot of work went into it!

I like the laced access points at the thumb and the back of the mitt. A new one for my want list. lol

[mikesglove]

Here's a vintage photo of the mitt above from the Ted Kennedy archives at the BBHOF. The photo is part of Kennedys curve ball pitching lesson course. It features the pitcher offering a Kennedy mitt to a catcher with a sore hand from mishandling that elusive pitch. That's a big ol' mitt!

[mikesglove]

I came across an ad for this catchers mitt. This was after Kennedy moved from Iowa to St. Louis to open his correspondence school in early 1900. He was still manufacturing gloves and mitts there.

[mikesglove]

Kennedy's... catchers mitts are entirely thumbless, as is also the basemen's and fielder's mitts, and all have a deep pocket which aids materially in holding the ball after it is caught. A pitcher's blind and fielding mitt is another of the novelties of this line, all of which is described and illustrated in their twenty four page catalogue, a copy of which can be had of the above firm for the asking. Every dealer should investigate this line as it contains new features."

Below are preparatory sketches for Kennedy's correspondence school lessons. The thumbless mitt on the right is noted as "Ted Kennedy's Famous Mitt".


The sketch looks like the example below.


The clincher for me is the buckle strap. Here's a cyanotype of the back of a Kennedy mitt.

The buckle strap is identical to the example below.

[ebbets55]

Hi Mike, this is great stuff! Years ago, I went to the Giamatti Research Library at the HOF in Cooperstown to research Ted Kennedy and his inventions. I came across a lot of the documentation in this thread but didn't see that last sketch. Wow. It's spot on. I didn't think my two (now one) catchers mitts were Kennedy inventions. Super cool if they are. Thanks for sharing.

Now, if somebody could turn up that Spalding 8/0.

JD

[mikesglove]

I believe the mitt in the foreground is a Ted Kennedy model.

The mitt on the left is from the photo above. The middle photo is a sketch Kennedy made for a brochure. The photo on the right is an example of a Kennedy mitt from JD's site