The Washington Herald · Washington, D.C. · 1912

A $25 Suit of Clothes Free to the First Washington Ball Player to Make a Home Run

Morton C. Stout and Co. of Washington had $12.50 suits to move in April 1912 and one very good promotion: a $25 suit free to the first Washington ball player to hit a home run at home. Watch the boys bat 'em out. Who will it be?

Morton C. Stout and Co., “The National Tailors” of 910 F Street N.W., took out most of a page in the Washington Herald in April 1912 to announce a lucky purchase of suitings from a big woolen mill, on sale at $12.50. “You know we don’t do ‘cheap’ tailoring,” the copy insists, and the drawing agrees: the man modeling the merchandise is a ballplayer finishing a home run swing.

The swing is not decoration. Down in a box of its own sits the hook: “A $25 Suit of Clothes FREE to the First Washington Ball Player to Make a Home Run in a Championship Game on the Home Grounds.” The season was days old, the Nationals were just settling into their year, and a tailor with eleven stores in eleven cities had figured out how to get every fan in town reading his ad for the rest of April. “The whole bunch are after that $25 Suit to Order. Watch the boys bat ‘em out. The first ‘homer’ on the home grounds gets it. Who will it be?”

Home runs at home came slower in 1912 than they do now, which is what made the offer safe to print and fun to watch. Somewhere in Washington a haberdasher checked the box scores every morning with real money on the line, and that is more than most of us can say about our advertising.