[sphere and ash]

I am not at all convinced that New York teams in the 1840s and 1850s, which included hundreds of volunteer firemen, had different belts for fire parades and for baseball. The only baseball-specific, leather firemen's belt I am aware of is the Baraboo belt in the National Baseball Hall of Fame's collection, which has the letters "BBC". But if I am a member of the Excelsior Volunteer Fire Department in Brooklyn, and my friends and I play baseball on a team that includes our fellow volunteer firefighters, should I be expected to have another belt made that includes the letters "BBC"? Why pay the expense? In fact, in the 1859 photograph of the Excelsiors, several different belts can be seen and none say "BBC".

I think of these belts the way I think about turnstiles: even if we know that a certain brand of turnstiles was used at Shibe Park or the Polo Grounds, there is no way to know if a particular example was used at that ballpark or a racetrack or a carnival. No turnstile manufacturer could stay in business just selling to baseball parks; they sold to anyone who needed turnstiles. The question then is: does it matter? Does my Shibe Park display suffer from the turnstile's lack of provenance? Everyone can have their own opinion about that; there is no right answer.