My Dad and My Baseball Glove

My Dad and My Baseball Glove

My Dad at 10 in his baseball uniform and my A2000 Wilson Glove

I was born in '49. Growing up, baseball was the dominant sport in America especially in the 50's. I grew up on Long Island in New York. For most the of 50's we had the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers all in NYC, each team with its star centerfielder: Mantle, Mays, and Snider respectively. Baseball was big in my family. My dad's dad played minor league ball. He was primarily a pitcher. He also played 1^st base when not pitching. My dad was the shortstop for his high school team and he also pitched, usually in relief. He played a little baseball in the military as he was on the base team. Base commanders took great pride in their baseball team so you had to be a pretty good ballplayer to be on the team. Those teams frequently included professional ballplayers. I loved baseball. My dad and I would often have a catch together after he got home from work. However the baseball talent was a bit diluted by the time it got down to me. I was not only not good enough to be a minor league player, I couldn't even make the high school baseball team.

I played baseball as often as I could with the other kids in my neighborhood. My first glove was the 3- fingered Rawlings PM (Playmaker) with a Stan Musial signature. It was a good glove. My Dad had the same glove. His was the full sized model where as mine was a youth sized model that I soon outgrew. I was maybe 10 when my dad took me to a local sporting goods store to buy a new glove. A baseball glove is a very personal item. It's not like you can't get another one of the same glove, but your baseball glove gets worked in to fit your hand and shaped to accommodate your preferences, it becomes uniquely yours. We looked at the gloves. I'm left handed. The selection for left handed gloves is never as large as it is for right handed gloves. (I always found it interesting that what's called a right handed glove actually goes on the left hand and vice versa.) The guy in the store noticed us rummaging around and eventually brought over a pricey professional quality glove that had been sitting in the display window for quite some time. It was a left handed glove but it was quite dried out. He offered it to us at a big discount. However, even with that discount it was still more than the other gloves we had been looking at and I was just a kid. I tried the glove and of course liked it right away. My dad looked over at me and asked how it felt. I replied “Great!” He bought it for me. At the time I thought it was the most special thing my dad ever did for me. The guy threw in a can of glove oil. I spent weeks working in that glove oiling it, molding the pocket, tying it up with a ball in the pocket, and soaking it in water. I loved that glove and took it with me everywhere usually strapping it to the handle bar of my bicycle.

Vintage Lefthanded Rawlings Playmaker Glove

I was in the 6^th grade and I had that glove for less than two years when I lost it. I brought it to school one day and left the glove in the basket on my bike. That's was not unusual. We all did that. When the weather was nice we would often try to get to school early so we could play a little ball on the ball field before school started. We parked our bikes on the side of the field leaning them against a tree. We always parked our bikes there, even when we didn't play ball, while we were at school. Nobody locked their bikes and it was common to leave stuff with your bike, including our gloves, when the weather was good. When school let out my glove was not with my bike where I'd left it. I was heartbroken but more than that I was dreading telling my dad I'd lost the special glove he bought me.

Me fielding a grounder with my old Wilson glove

I waited a few days, borrowing other kid's gloves in any games I participated it. I usually had to borrow right handed gloves which meant I had to wear them backwards on my right had. It was not really a big deal because I had done this multiple times before. The result is that the glove sort of works like a first baseman's glove, very doable. The day came when I had to tell my dad I'd lost the glove. He was surprisingly understanding. I had expected to be in trouble and maybe punished. Even worse I thought he'd be disappointed in me. He just asked a few questions, and said he was sorry. He knew how much I loved the glove. The following Saturday he took me out to get another glove. Of course this time it was just one of the regular type gloves, but still a nice one. I picked out a Wilson, one of the A2000 models that were very popular at the time. Mine was an Al Kaline Autographed model. My favorite player was Mickey Mantle and some kids would pick gloves based on the signature on the glove but I always chose based on how the glove felt to me. I used that glove for years and have had to completely restring it multiple times.

I was still using that glove when in the 80's I joined a softball team in San Jose. The organizer and coach, Leon, took one look at my glove and told me I needed to get a better one. It was now a 20+ year old glove, old in style and small by the current standards. I resisted. That glove felt like part of my hand and even though most of the padding was worn out, I felt like I could catch anything with it and I just didn't want to move on from that glove. I had been playing with that team for a couple of years when one Saturday I showed up for practice. We practiced every Saturday morning. At this point I'm in my 30's and I'm the oldest guy on the team. Initially we were not a very good team but we got a lot better the last couple of years and we added some better players. Now single guys my age generally went out on Friday nights and tended to stay out late. Early Saturday morning was generally not my or for that matter any of my teammates' finest hour. If it hadn't been for practice most of us would have still been in bed. Practice was supposed to start at 8 but few of us regularly got there on time. That Saturday when I got to the ball field batting practice had already started. There was no one covering first base so once I was ready I trotted out to cover first base. There was this new guy, Dale, at short. Dale, as I was about to learn, had a major league arm. Dale would end up playing outfield for us. He once airmailed a ball home from deep center field, and by airmailed I mean his throw didn't just go over the catcher's head, it went over the entire backstop and hit the top of the grandstands behind it. Anyway, the first ball hit goes to short. Dale fields it and rifles a throw to me over at first. The ball arrives swiftly above my shoulder to my right side. I put my glove up and the ball hits the webbing and goes right through it. The web ends up on the ground behind me and the ball a bit further away. I was just glad the glove was not in front of my face.

OK, I finally relented and decided to get a new glove. There was a little place in Campbell, near San Jose run by a guy named Charlie Rose. He did glove repair and also had a selection of high quality major league type baseball gloves. I visited his shop and fell in love with a glove made by Nakona. Nakona is more known for their cowboy boots but they also make great baseball gloves. It was pricey but it was a beautiful glove. I splurged and bought it. When you bought a glove from Charlie, it would be partially broken in and he would etch your name on the back of the glove.

A number of years after I purchased this glove I was at home in my apartment in San Francisco when I heard an urgent knock on my door. I opened it to find a fireman. He said “There's a fire in the basement of your building and the one next store. We're afraid the boiler in the basement might blow and set the whole building on fire. You needed to get out now as the building could burst into flames at any moment.” I quickly took a look back into my apartment to see what I might want to grab. I had just one chance to grab something but it had to be quick. I eliminated my stereo (too big), my records (too many). So I opened my closet. Did I take a jacket or some clothes? Did I take any pictures? Nope! Heck, I didn't even grab the money on my dresser. I grabbed my baseball glove. I didn't even hesitate. With only a moment to choose that was the item I deemed to be the most important to save. There I was standing out in the street with everyone else from the two apartment buildings in my jeans and t-shirt clutching a baseball glove. The firemen ended up getting the fire out with no damage to any of the apartments and so all of my stuff was saved.

Guess what? I ended up losing that baseball glove too when I failed to put it in my gym bag after a game one afternoon. It was back to Charlie Rose for another glove, but not so extravagant this time. I bought the classic Rawlings glove with the finger hole on the back. I still have that Wilson A2000 glove, the 2^nd glove my Dad bought me when I was 12. I restrung it again and I still use it sometimes when Kris and I go to the park for a catch. I still love it and it's really what I should have grabbed that day because that's really what I treasured most. When I see that glove I feel my dad's love for me.

    The Nakona Glove                                My Wilson A2000, My Rawlings Glove and Kris's 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Epilogue

I wrote most of this story back in November 2020. Serendipitously my friends David and Jeanie sent me a book on baseball gloves for Christmas. The book is “Glove Affairs” a sort of history of the baseball glove and the attachment players have for them. I've owned 5 baseball gloves. I don't remember enough about the pro model glove my dad bought me to tell if it's in the book.  The Nakona, along with Glovesmith, is only mentioned as a high quality American baseball glove maker. My three other gloves are all highlighted and pictured in the book. Two are Rawlings and the other is the Wilson highlighted in the story above. I still have the Wilson and the last glove I bought which is a classic Rawlings RBG36 with the hole in the back for sticking out your index finger. I bought the glove from Charlie Rose after losing my precious Nakona glove. When Kris and I got together we were both on the company softball team. She was still using her old childhood glove and needed a new one. We went to see Charlie Rose and she bought the right-handed version of the same glove I had.

   My Dad and me at 10 in our Scouts uniforms