Random Photo(s) Season 2-A new baseball glove

This summer, I did something I hadn’t done in almost 30 years. I bought a new baseball glove!

The baseball glove is a beautiful thing, when you really think about it. Good ones are handcrafted and made from no more than quality leather and some padding. It’s purpose, to allow a person to snag a ball, nearly as hard as a rock and often traveling near 100 mph, right out of the air. When you think about it like this, it’s pretty amazing. I’ve always liked thinking about things in a way that makes you really appreciate what they are at a higher level. 

About the time I got my glove, a friend loaned me his copy of Glove Affairs by Noah Liberman. The book is all about the baseball glove, the history, break in techniques and wonderful stories about Major Leaguers and their gloves. 

In the early years, baseball was played without gloves, but eventually the players came to their senses. Liberman writes about the innovation of the baseball glove and how for almost 90 years, there was no innovation. For almost 90 years, the baseball glove was nothing but a leather mitt. During these 90 years, air travel was invented and progressed to supersonic jets, yet the baseball glove remained virtually unchanged. Why? It was always thought baseball gloves had to look like a human hand. It wasn’t until Wilson unveiled the A2000, that baseball gloves began to look something like they do today.

Isn’t it funny that a hang up like: ‘had to look like the human hand’, completed stiffled innovation for 90 years.   

---

I’ve had six baseball gloves in my life and I can vividly remember the day I got each one. Equally, I remember the process I went through to get them broken in; a meticulous process that brought me both excitement and anxiety. Getting that mitt broken in properly was an obsession.

30 years after their purchase, my old high school gloves are still in excellent condition, with perfect beausage (A synonym of patina, beausage is when an item gains beauty due to being regularly and heavily used. Generally a term used for bicycles, I think it’s perfect for baseball gloves too.) My gloves are both black Rawlings, Heart of the Hide, Gold Glove Series. They served me well then and still make for a quality catch experience. 

Despite the excellent condition of these oldies, but goodies, I’ve long felt the pull of a new glove. A few years ago, I went to the Rawlings website to look around and was blown away by customization available. Ultimately, I decided I didn’t need it and set the urge aside…until a few months ago. 

The urge returned, this time egged on by some work colleagues, fellow glove nerds, who raved about the smell and the feeling of putting on a new glove, breaking it in and playing catch. I was hooked and I returned to the Rawlings website with a custom design in mind. 

---

Like many people my age, I grew up playing catch with my dad and brother. Every time we went somewhere, our ball and gloves came with. Any place we went, I remember us playing catch and I never remember my dad saying no to a catch with my brother and I. We would stand side by side, our dad on the other end, alternate throws back and forth between us. Sometimes we would count how many throws we could make before we threw one away. 

My new glove is a beauty; custom color and design, it’s one of a kind status stamped right into the thumb. It has been every thing I hoped, the smell, the feel and the obsessive break in process.

A good glove can be properly broken-in, in about three to four weeks, depending on the process. When it comes to that break-in process, there’s nothing better than playing catch. 

I carry my glove around the house. I bring it to games, wear it and throw a ball into it when I watch or listen to a game at home. It comes to work almost every day and we play catch at lunch. But there’s one real reason I bought this glove and that’s in the hope that some day our son Edwin will want to bring our ball and gloves every where, just like we did with out dad.