1868c.5

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The "Figure 8" Base Ball Appears?

Salience	Noteworthy
Tags	EquipmentEquipment
Location
City/State/Country:	Natick, MA, United States
Modern Address
Game	Base BallBase Ball
Immediacy of Report	Retrospective
Age of Players	AdultAdult
Holiday
Notables
Text	"I inclose a clipping relating to base ball.  I am the inventor of the base ball cover referred to.  Fifty-five years ago, when a boy of ten years, my mother gave me yarn enough, of her own spinning, for a ball.  Next thing was leather for a cover.  I was a poor boy and couldn't buy.  An old shoemaker gave me two small pieces, and said perhaps I could piece them up.  My efforts resulted in the exact shape now in universal use.  About twenty years ago I showed to a nephew of mine the cover of my boyhood.  He was working for Harwood, the great ball maker, of Natick, Mass.  Harwood adopted this cover at once, as it takes much leather and has but one seams, instead of five or six.  Well, I didn't reap the fortunate, as I didn't get it patented, but no matter, I've “got there all the same.”  (The Sporting Life November 14, 1888)
Sources	Letter to The Sporting Life from C.H. Jackson, West Brookfield, MA, November 4, 1888 -- printed November 14, 1888.
Warning
Comment	Richard Hershberger notes, 9/12/2017: "My opinion has been that this is unsubstantiated, but plausible.  I want to focus here on the bit about the writer's nephew working for Harwood.  I just made the connection with this description of baseball manufacture, from four years earlier: 'On the upper floor of the establishment sat several men with baskets of dampened chamois and buckskin clippings at their sides.  Before each workman stood a stout piece of joist, in the end of which was inserted a mold, hemispherical in shape, in which the balls are formed.  Taking a handful of cuttings from the basket, the workman pressed them together in his hands and then worked about the mass a few yards of strong woollen yarn.  Placing the embryo ball in the mold, he pounded it into shape with a heavy flat mallet, and then wound on more yarn and gave the ball another pounding.  After testing its weight on a pair of scales and its diameter with a tape measure he threw the ball into a basket and began another.  When the newly-made balls are thoroughly dried they are carried to the sewing-room on the floor below, where they are to receive their covers.  Forty young women sat at tables sewing on the covers of horse-hide.  Grasping a ball firmly in her left hand, with her right hand one of the young women thrust a three-cornered needle through the thick pieces of the cover and drew them firmly together.  A smart girl can cover two or three dozen of the best and eight dozen of the cheaper grades of balls in a day.  The wages earned weekly range from $7 to $9.  The balls are afterward taken to the packing-room, where the seams are smoothed down and the proper stamps are put on.  The best balls are made entirely of yarn and India-rubber. “My brother was one of the pioneers in this business,” said the manufacturer.  “He was the inventor of the two-piece cover now in general use throughout the country.  If my brother had only patented his invention the members of our family would not be wearing diamonds instead of bits of white glass in our shirt fronts.  Ball-covers are made, almost without exception, of horse-hide, which costs $3 a side.  We used to obtain our supply from John Cart, a leather dealer in the Swamp for nearly thirty-five years.  We are obliged to go to Philadelphia now, there being no merchant here who keeps horse-hide leather.  The capacity of our factory when we get our new molding machines in working order will be about 15,000 daily, each machine being expected to turn out 1,200 balls daily.'  (St. Louis Post-Dispatch June 14, 1884, quoting the New York Tribune) "It is the second paragraph that jumped out at me.  Was C. H. Jackson's nephew working for Harwood because that was his father's business?  It seems plausible.  The Post-Dispatch piece doesn't identify the manufacturer, or even the city.  I have been unable to find the Tribune original.  If anyone else can, this might shed some light on the question.  Or confuse it further." Edit with form to add a comment
Query	Edit with form to add a query
Source Image	[[Image:|left|thumb]]
External Number
Submitted by	Richard Hershberger
Submission Note	19CBB Posting, September 12, 2017
Has Supplemental Text

1868c.5 The "Figure 8" Base Ball Appears?"

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