before the half bat...

when i was a kid we used to play baseball by trying to hit a tennis ball over my friend's neighbor's hedge. "dork" had a nice selection of bats, but for some reason we always gravitated towards using the one which had been broken in half, split down the center of the "barrel" so that if you looked at the top of the bat it was not an "O" shape, but a "D". we always called it the half bat.

well, here's a nice italian printed postcard (not an RPPC), of two professors with a seemingly normal mandolin, and some kind of odd looking harp guitar. what's even more interesting is the instrument on the left edge that looks like the half bat's distant cousin. it seems to be a guitar sawed in half with the bridge and strings going across the depth rather than the half "face" of the shell. unlike the half bat there's also a little "horn" attached to its side for sound amplification. maybe it is some strange monochord or ??? if anyone has any info on this one, i'd appreciate it. i would of course love to hear what this thing sounded like!

(and speaking of timely half bats, in light of tonight's giants game; i reserve the right to continue to view hammerin' hank as the all time home run king...)