Circa 1956 Emmett Kelly Single Signed Baseball. His entertainment career began as a trapeze artist in 1923, but Kelly would become famous as "Weary Willie," a hobo clown who soon became the most recognizable figure in the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. From 1942 through 1955 Kelly traveled with the big top, but famously left the show in 1956 to serve as the mascot Bum of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team.