McQueen Glove?

[H-webman]

Does any one know what is the glove that Steve Mc Queen uses in "The Great Escape"? 1940's model something with a custom web? Just thought I would try to stump this large group of glove lovers.

[Mike**Mize]

I remembered how tickled I was when I last saw that film again a couple of years ago and saw Steve McQueen carrying around that old split finger.
I'm guessing, but to me it looked like it might have been a Rawlings RR or KK Model. It had a wideness to it like the old KK I have in my collection. I'm completely ready to be told that's not it, but I did want to say how much I enjoyed the fact that it was there, in the film (what ever it was). When we see military issue gloves from WWII these days they're just about always Wilson 615-17's or Elmer Riddle M/G gloves. I still think Steve's looked like he brought it from home and that it was his personal RR or KK.

[softball66]

As Mike does, I like to watch the movies that utilize gloves as props, not necessarily baseball movies, but like "The Great Escape" and "Shawshank Redemption." I ran a shot of the Shawshank and Morgan Freeman, a lefty with his '40s glove, playing catch while... of all persons Ebby Cavin "Nuke" LaLoosh... looks on. That's Tim Robbins who stars in Shawshank but also played the goofy pitcher LaLoosh in "Bull Durham."
I kind of figured McQueen had a Rawlings glove as Mike described, maybe a top-line glove. Didn't pay any attention to the web. Did it have a rolled lace like the RR?
Also remembered a Gary Cooper film (not as Lou Gehrig) with a brand new glove in a scene where he was trying to master a pitch or something.
Can anyone think of any more?
By the way it's interesting seeing which actors look comfortable with baseball. I didn't get the feeling that Robert Redford played much ball after watching him in "The Natural." Kostner's a ball player. Charlie Sheen played in college I think. Forgot about watching Robbins throw. Freeman had an easy, free motion throwing some catch in the prison yard.
Biggest laugh was Dennis Quaid who played and "pitched" in "The Rookie" was told by baseball consultant, Ron Dedeaux (old USC coach) that he "couldn't throw a cat from the car."

[softball66]

small world huh? Robert Redford's glove from "The Natural" is up for sale on ebay:
http://cgi.liveauctions.ebay.com/21072- ... 6626QQrdZ1

Well, Redford did throw better than the Mayor of Cincinnati at opening day.

[Mike**Mize]

I can think of a couple I'd like to go back and take another look at to see which gloves were used. One would be Eight Men Out, the great John Sayles film. Another would be Bingo Long and the Travelling All Stars with Richard Pryor. There's lots of baseball played in both of those.

[Number9]

I watched Eight Men Out when I was a kid and later purchased the DVD as an adult. The one thing that bothers me though is the glove that Charlie Sheen wears. If I remember correctly, it was a 40's or 50's glove that had been de-laced. The part that bothered me wasn't the fact that the glove was not the right vintage, but rather the fact that Sheen was such a huge collector of vintage material and didn't insist on a glove swap. If you watch the movie with even a hint of glove knowledge, it is a glaring mistake. I'm sure other players were using incorrect equipment too.

Another mistake is when either Eddie Cicotte or Lefty Williams is autographing a baseball for one of the mobsters in the hotel bar. The ball he is signing is a Rawlings NL ball. It shows up again later in the movie too.

Still a great baseball movie. I wish there were more like it.

[softball66]

good going on those baseball movies. Shortly after we started the newsletter, glover Don Millington ran into Steve Laliloff, who made some of the gloves for "Eight Men Out." In an interview he told me that they found one of the original eight's old glove and that Steve created, put together some replicas for the movie based on that. John Sales had hired Steve to recreate a travelers trunk to be loaded onto one of the pullman cars in the train. Then they asked him to make some baseballs, one, a soft one for a pitch to hit the batter (remember the "tipoff pitch, first Reds batter)
and the actor didn't want to get hit with a hard ball (wimp). The other was a weighted ball that would curve naturally because the actor pitcher couldn't throw one. Good story.
They asked Steve later (same producer-John Sayles) to make gloves for "Field of Dreams" afterward and Steve asked them what happened to the gloves he'd made for 8 men out. "The actors took them home with them," he was told.
When "League of Their Own" was made we got Dave Bushing involved in selling the propmaster the vintage gloves for the film. Dave still laments that he wished he'd just rented the gloves and got them back ...alas the actors went home with them.

[softball66]

I had bought the card set by Pacific of the movie. Intermixed in the set are some actual vintage shots of involved players like Edd Roush, Jimmy Ring and Bill Rariden. I'm assuming the actors couldn't or woudn't use the older true vintage tiny gloves. The best close-up shot of "Chick" Gandil (actor Michel Rooker) has a first base mitt that fits the mid to late 30s of cross hatch lacing web. The 1920 type were short, round pancake shape while the 1b mitts elongated, were taller and oblong. That's what Chick is using. The shots of the movie actors playing Swede Rydberg, "Lefty" Williams, Eddie Collins are all wearing 30s-40s size gloves. Cicotte's glove looks more legit smaller with the splayed fingers. Schalk's actor is wearing a buckleback but one can't tell much about it from the back. What makes the gloves a little more laughable is that in the "real" photo of Reds pitcher Jimmy Ring looks about the size of today's batting glove.
One of our collectors told me that when they were making the film, "Cobb" in Birmingham, the extras were having terrible times trying to catch with the older gloves.
I can believe that.

[robin_buckeye]

I thought Redford looked pretty good in "The Natural." He played baseball at Van Nuys High School in Los Angeles. He received a baseball scholarship to the University of Colorado, as a pitcher. He lost the scholarship due to excessive drinking.

[softball66]

I'd heard the same thing Robin but Robert looked very "labored" to me throwing the ball. He might have been a little too old for the part or lost a step or two. He didn't exactly look like Josh Hamilton. Kostner looked a little more real to me as an athlete. Tim Robbins, though, didn't do much on the player level for me either.
Anyone watch the 8 men out actors very closely?

[Centerfield]

If I recall correctly, there was an old Little Rascals episode where a gentleman bought the kids some gloves. The scene had him walk up to them with an armfull of brand new boxes and they ripped them open to take the gloves out. I knew nothing of glove manufacturers in the mid-1970's when I saw this episode, but I seem to recall dogs on the boxes. I've been trying to find a tape or dvd of this the past few years to see if they were D&M boxes!

[edingc]

Going back to Charlie Sheen, on the special features of Major League it talks about how he was hitting mid-80s on the radar gun during the filming.

[robin_buckeye]

Softball66, you’re probably right about Redford in “The Natural” – I haven’t seen that movie since it came out in 1984 -- and I can tell you the exact date I saw it -- May 16, 1984 – something unusual happened that day.

My girlfriend was from LA and we were visiting her folks there. We thought we’d go see “The Natural” as we both liked Redford and baseball (she used to say that the two most handsome men in the world were Redford and me – but I think she may have been exaggerating). We looked in the paper and found that there was a matinee showing at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. This is the theater with the movie stars' hand and foot prints in concrete, and it’s a fun place to go even if you’re not seeing a movie. I had taken my Mom there once when she visited from Ohio and she found it fascinating.

When we came out of the theater after the movie there was a crowd outside, which there usually is, but this one was very animated and it was immediately obvious to us that something had happened. I saw a security guard nearby and asked him what was going on.

“Spielberg and Lucas just left,” he replied, “they put their hand and footprints in concrete over there.”

And sure enough, there was fenced off, fresh concrete with their prints and signatures, and many security guards as well as a few cops.

[oldreliable]

I thought that Robert Redford looked pretty good as a ballplayer in The Natural. His swing was sweet. I thought that I read that he was kicked off the University of Colorado team or lost his scholarship for too much drinking, like written above by robin_buckeye.

In Field of Dreams, Ray Liota was catching the ball with his index finger sticking out from the back of the glove. Wasn't that started by Yogi Berra but not until decades after Shoeless Joe was out of the game?

This is a good thread.

[oldreliable]

At the end of Field of Dreams, when Kevin Costner plays catch with his Dad, was he using an A2000?

It looks like one to me, like where the break of the web is and the way the wrist-strap looks on the glove. Maybe an late-60s to early-70s model? Sort of like the one on my avatar.

I could be wrong.