Is this the symbol of the once-dreaded Black Hand? No, it's a glovemaker's template from 1905. When pitcher Ted Kennedy's money wing went bad in his mid-twenties, he took up the fine art of sphaeramancorifacery, a crude Latin portmanteau I just made up to describe the art of baseball glove making. Kennedy would send this piece of paper to big leaguers in hopes they would order one of his gloves. It's kind of intimidating, if you don't stop to read it.
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In his minor league career, Kennedy played for three teams with some of the greatest names of all time: Omahogs, LaCrosse Freezers and Des Moines Prohibitionists. As the text of his broadside (seen below in close-up) illustrates, at no stop in his career did he seem to learn about punctuation.
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