The Red Ball as worn

1891–today · at anchor — the device's design record stands in the Arts section

The mark. The Red Ball device's design and registration record stands in this history's Arts section; what belongs here is the mark as a thing worn. The knit boot carried a black band at its top — the band of the Ball-Band name — and the red ball device was in actual use from 1891 and registered with the name in 1901. From those years the mark went out on the town's product and came home on the town's feet: the works' shoes were Mishawaka's own dress as much as its export. The wearing reached its widest form in the Red Ball Jets of 1951–1971, the company's first sport shoe — canvas uppers and the red dot for signature — a pair of 1951–55 held today by The Henry Ford, stamped "RED BALL / Jets / BY BALL-BAND," its box proclaiming "they're fast!"

The seconds. The local wearing had a local form, carried in the community memory record on the works' closing: factory "seconds" — shoes with the red ball removed or defaced, so the mark could not be sold as first quality — were sold cheaply to local families, and Mishawaka children grew up in Ball-Band shoes with the ball taken off. The mark as worn in its own town was thus sometimes its absence, and that, too, is the documented record of the device as dress. Today the sign stands at architectural size: a giant painted high-top bearing the red ball at the riverfront, photographed there by visitors as late as September 2026 — the town still wearing its mark, now as a landmark.

Sources:

1. The Arts and Ball Band sections of this history (the device's use from 1891, the 1901 registration, the Jets' course 1951–1971, the slogan conflict carried there and not re-tried here, the seconds and the painted high-top).
2. The Henry Ford, collection record for the 1951–55 Red Ball Jets (object 2008.145.28).