FIRST BALL GLOVE IS MADE IN FRANCE [...] U-BOAT SINKS EQUIPMENT

Description

Date: 7 June 1918

Transcript:

FIRST BALL GLOVE IS MADE IN FRANCE
Bat Shortage Can Be Remedied by Enterprising Manufacturer
U-BOAT SINKS EQUIPMENT
Goods Worth $30,000 Lost When Liner Oronsa Was Torpedoed

Score another run for France. A French manufacturer has made a baseball glove—a fielder's glove, to be exact—working from specifications and blueprints furnished him by the Y.M.C.A.

For you might as well know the truth first as last. The shortage of athletic equipment is serious. And if any of you are still laboring under the delusion that the German is a nice, kind, sweet animal, not particularly harmful unless poked with a stick and to be goaded into a bad temper only by having snooze powder blown into his face, then let it he known that when the liner Oronsa was torpedoed some weeks ago, $30,000 worth
of baseball paraphernalia, intended for your use, was lost.

Out of the necessity thus provided arose the invention of the fielder's glove a la francaise. A leather goods manufacturer was found who was willing to try anything once, and the result was a product that would have been a credit t an American sporting goods house that had been in the business 50 years. There is only one thing tactically wrong about the now glove—the thumb and forefinger are held together, not by the customary piece of leather, but by a mere cord. While the cord is strong, it is a question whether it will stand up under the hot liner that sooner or later is going to come up against it.

French Woodworkers This Way

The greatest, shortage in equipment is the lack of bats. Everything from spokes to tree limbs is now being used, and where units are lucky enough to have a real bat, it is screwed together and tied together and clamped together every time it threatens to crack under the strain. If you want to know what unpopularity is, get tip to the plate with the only bat in 100 kilometers, smash out a homer, and crack the bat doing it.

But there's a remedy. Bats are easy to make, if you have the wood and the machinery—an ordinary turning lathe. So if any enterprising French wood turner will write to THE STARS AND
STRIPES, a contract will be placed in his hands that will keep him busy as long as there's an American Army in France. No hand carving, no filigree, just plain, honest wagon tongue—those are the specifications.

Must Have Bats

For we've got to have bats. And it would be easier to have them made here than to wait for another shipment to replace those lost with the Oronsa.

On the shores of some far island in the Atlantic, where a chance, fishing boat or an Arctic exploration party drops in occasionally and puts the natives wise to the fact that the war is still going strong, a case of bats from the Oronsa may some
day be washed up. And the natives, opening it in the hope of finding bonbons, blubber, razor strops or raisin seeders, will remark, "Gee, what primitive fighters those Americans must be!"

Source:
"First Ball Glove Is Made in France." The Stars and Stripes. Paris, France, June 7. (None, Paris, $s) 7 Jun. 1918, p. 5. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/20001931/1918-06-07/ed-1/.

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