Personally, I wouldn't worry much about the R on the knob. I don't think H&B was kicking bats to the side a whole lot as rejects since bats were all hand turned and weights had to be specific. I'd imagine that any bats that weren't up to the liking of the player would have been give away for use by other players. H&B just wasn't turning out nearly the number of bats that they do present day and this is further confirmed by looking at the ordering records of players during the 1920s.
To note, the Eddie Collins bat appears to be two letters RB or RE and so the two really are unrelated.
Since this Frisch bat lacks inch marks on the knob I believe it would likely be evaluated as a professional model bat. The R on the knob could have been put there by a previous owner at any time during the last hundred or so years since the bat was turned. Certainly not a complete deal breaker in terms of professional issuance.
As an unrelated example, I have a set of my great grandfather's tools from the early 1900s. Several of these are stamped with his initials, CEB. I also was fortunate to have located the metal letter stamps that were used to do the stamping. Certainly wouldn't be unusual for a previous owner to have done the same thing at some point.
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Tim Byington
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