Before stiff leather and plastic shoulder pads hit the market, shoulder pads were leather or cloth pads sewn on the jersey exterior. Shoemakers and grandmothers crafted many, as seen in the image of the 1910 Olivia (MN) high school team…

A Tidbit from two months ago showed a motley collection of homemade shoulder pads sewn on the jerseys of a 1910 Minnesota high school team. Here’s the image of the Minnesota boys again. When the Minnesota team’s picture was taken, Spalding and its competitors had a decade of experience selling leather shoulder pads through catalogs and stores, but the Minnesota boys likely lacked the money for the real thing, so they made do…

One of last week’s tidbits covered a step in the evolution of shoulder pads that came via Spalding’s Model D shown in the image below. Click here to review the full story. Another step came with Spalding’s 1910 introduction of its Model YF which combined molded leather cups with a felt pad for collar bone protection. The Spalding ad below shows the Model YF and Y, along with the Model D, as well as the external shoulder pads shown in the…