Where did you get your first glove?

[oldreliable]

I was recently thinking about the day my father took me to a sporting goods store and bought me my first glove. I started to think that it might nice to hear your stories as to where you guys got your first gloves when you were kids.

My dad took me to the Nazareth Sporting Goods store in Nazareth, PA in the winter of 1979 and he made me get a Spalding Sal Bando youth model which I didn't really want. As it turned out, the glove was to heavy and stiff for my young hand, and my attention was really caught by the Rawlings Fastback models which a friend of mine already had.

In my first year of Little League with that Bando glove, I don't think that I fielded a single ball cleanly--and I was a shortstop that year.

The following winter, for my birthday I made my mom take me back to Nazareth Sporting Goods and I got a Joe Rudi Rawlings Fastback glove, which I really did better with, but was still an awful fielder. I did lead my team in hits that year, though.

What I'm really left with after all these years is the sadness that the old sporting goods store in my home town is long gone. I wish it were still there. The memories, though, they're as sweet as can be.

So how about it, where and how did you guys get your first gloves?

Thanks,

John

[Brennerbaseball]

Funny story. My Dad bought my brother a beautiful A2000 in the 1970's and after his first team practice he accidently left it on the bleachers. When they got home my Dad asked, "Where is your new glove?" My brother said, "Oh no! I left it on the bleachers!" They raced back to the ball field but the glove was gone.

When they returned home my Dad made my brother go pick out a "switch" from the treeline. Man, he got it good. As his little brother I could hardly bare to watch; I felt so bad for him.

Meanwhile at the next baseball practice, the coach showed up and announced, "Who left their Wilson glove after practice last week???" He pulled my brother's A2000 out of the equipment bag.

Needless to say, my brother and I never again lost any of our belongings.

My frist glove was a Rawlings Fernando Valenzuela. Sadly, I don't have it anymore. I ditched it for a larger glove when I started highschool ball. I'd give anything to have it back. I tried to replace it with one I bought on ebay but it just doesn't have the same feel because I didn't break it in.

[GloveGypsy]

Mine was a hand-me-down. Someone gave my family some old gloves, bats and baseballs. My pic from that box was a Rawlings Lou Burdette LB15. It's in rough shape, but I still have it.

[glovemedic]

I was recently thinking about the day my father took me to a sporting goods store and bought me my first glove. I started to think that it might nice to hear your stories as to where you guys got your first gloves when you were kids.

Mine came from a local sporting goods store in Catonsville Md when I was 7 yrs old (1961). It is the Al Dark signature model Spalding glove featured on my website. I had nothing to do with picking it out. My father brought home matching RHT and LHT models for my brother and I one afternoon. I still have mine, my brother's is long gone. Later at 9 yrs, my father took me to the PX to buy a new glove that I had until recently. It was a horrible off brand Japanese glove and I never could catch with it. The old Al Dark continued to get playing time well into Jr. High, but I was playing slo-pitch in PE and in a Church league then. Following those years, I did not see the glove again until I was in my 30's when I found it at my folk's house and needed it to play catch with my girl friend's son. The laces in the finger busted and I put it back together with a shoe lace. I relaced it and cleaned it up once I started the glove medic business. My son loved it and wanted to play with it because it was like the gloves in "Sandlot" so I had to find a similar one on eBay for him before I could retire it. So yea, I still have my first glove too, but it is more from luck than design.



Have fun and play hard!

[oldreliable]

These are great stories. And that is a real nice-looking glove! I'll have to go look for that old Spalding Bando model that I blamed for my hands of stone. It's still exists somewhere at my parent's house as does the Rudi Rawlings.

I still have every glove I have ever used. I just don't know where they are packed away at my parent's.

[crackofthebat]

My first glove came from the Jordan Hardware Store in Willimantic, CT. My father took me to the store for my 5th birthday (in 1953) and talked me into getting a Clyde Vollmer model (don't remember the manufacturer). It was a very cheap model with plastic binding and a tennis ball was too big for the pocket - stiff as a board!. A year later my grandfather bought me a 2 finger Wilson which was a nice soft glove. When I started playing Little League and was mowing lawns, I bought a Nokona 1B mitt which I still have. One of the kids who lived down the street from me had a collection of three gloves his father picked up while serving in WW2. He used his Denkert Frank Malzone, but I loved playing catch with the Goldsmith Pete Reiser, the Nokona Joff Cross, and a Rawlings Mickey Owen. When I started collecting gloves I returned home and asked my old neighbor if he still had the old gloves and would like to sell them. He told me they were in the garage - he was about to take them to the dump! He gave them to me. I still have the Reiser and the Cross.

[softball66]

Very nostalgic and warm topic. Meaty stories on first gloves too.
First glove I used was a boxing glove as couldn't get gloves during WWII at retail store. Grandmother bought me a catchers mitt which I didn't take to BUT the MOST EXCITING glove was the trapper mitt which I got when I was about nine or 10.
We played this game called "burn out." Where you would stand at a fairly respectable distance and throw to your friend as hard as you could often with anguished and painful catches in the palm. Then I got a Rawlings Trapper Claw base mitt and when you caught with it, the ball kind of nestled in that faux finger webbing and it was "no pain and all gain." It was so neat to scoop balls out of dirt with it too and I could see where first basemen fell in love with it digging the ball out of the dirt. It became the most popular and famous 1b mitt of all time.

[V-Anchored]

My grandpa bought me my first glove in 1952 or 53. It was a Grady Hatton model. From looking at the Catalog Source Book I'm guessing it was a Draper Maynard DG921. That glove was hardly big enough to catch a baseball but I used it in '53 in a softball league that was ran by the Ft. Wayne Pistons (now Detroit) basketball team. We hit the ball off of a tee and about halfway through the season the tee broke and from then on one of the basketball players would picth for both teams. My grandpa promised me a new glove in '54 is I made Little League (not everyone made a team back then). He kept his promise and came through with a Spalding Phil Rizzuto glove. Probably a 1147. I wish I still had both of them.

[Thudhugger]

When I was a kid we would all go down to the vacant lot next to the local IGA store. This was I would say, late sixties early seventies. I didn't have a glove but I had a friend with extras so I would always use one of his. So this one day I'm in the outfield and buried in the tall grass is a real nice Spalding glove (it was endorsed but at the time I didn't know the player's name). It had rained the day before and it was soaked but it dried up well and I used it throughout my childhood. It's been lost somewhere in my travels but i'll never forget it. Best glove find I ever made. The player was Rocky Colavito.

[Mike_2007]

My first glove came for the Plaid Stamps showroom. My parents shopped at A&P supermarkets and you got stamps based on how much you purchased. The glove was a piece of crap. The pocket wasn't formed right and there was a crease in it when I got it. Some time later I got a Regent glove from the neighboor hood department store. The glove was pretty stiff and I remember oiling it with a big can of glove oil to try and break it in. I really don't know what happened to it. I used to play ball everyday in a schoolyard. One day, after a bunch of teenagers had finished playing and left, I was with friends ready to play next and found a very used but perfectly broken in Rawlings. The glove was scuffed all over from being thrown on the concrete a million times; it was almost "worn out" but felt great when I put my hand in it and caught a few ball with it. We decided to leave and walking up a flight of stairs to ge tto street level we cross paths with a few older neighborhood bullies. The biggest bully of the bunch spots the glove and says "hey kid let me check out your glove". He decides right there he likes it and doesn't feel like giving it back and walks off with it. I couldn't really say or do anything about it.

These are the 3 stories I remember regarding my youth gloves. So when my son started playing ball, I wanted to make sure he had a nice glove to play with. And I'm still buying gloves...

In my early twenties I started playing softball for my company's team. I went out and bought a Louiseville Slugger 125 series glove ( made in Japan). It's a big 13" glove and I still have it. Unfortunately I gave it the old school, flat as a pancake break in... Another disapointment - wish I was smart enough then to have gotten a HOH Rawlings.

[Cowboy7130]

I love the first glove stories! I had to do a little research on my first glove. I still have it, but I couldn't remember exactly where I got it. In the mid- to late-1960's in my hometown, there were a Western Auto and an S and H Green Stamp store right next to each other in a little shopping center along the main business street. We didn't know yet to call it a strip mall! I was pretty sure that I got my first glove at one or the other, because I remember riding in the car to the little shopping center. Now, did I enter Western Auto or S and H? Hmmmm .... so I went and asked mom!

According to my mom, she had been saving Green Stamps for a set of nice dishes. However, my dad noticed the baseball glove in the little catalog, and told her I would need the glove more than we needed the new dishes, since I would be trying out for Little League in the next few weeks. Daddy always was a practical guy! The glove was-is a VERY small Johnny Walker (Japan) FG 200 7" full grain cowhide. It never really fit my hand too well. It was extremely cheap, even by frugal-parents-who-shop-at-Green-Stamp-store standards. But, it DID get me through that first year of Little League!

[vintagebrett]

My first glove was a Nokona that I left out in the yard and it disappeared - I'd like to think the bear in the back woods enjoys playing catch with it. My second glove was the Wilson A2000 I posted in one of the other threads. Still have that one. There is a cool picture at my parents house of my dad and I when I was like 3 years old - I have the Nokona on and my dad has a Rawlings HOH fielders glove - I'll grab it next time I'm there and scan it in.

[kenyon]

My first glove was actually my dad's glove he used in high school, a Spalding Al Dark model 1036. My dad bought the glove new when he was in high school back in 1955 or 1956 at Al's Bike & Sporting Goods in Logan, Utah for $8.75. I remembered how embarassed I was using this glove, it's overall appearance, the thick fingers, and thought it was unfair I had to use an old glove like this. I still have the glove in my possession today and it is one of the most cherished items from my childhood, not to mention my most prized glove in my collection. My dad took great care of it, and remarkably, I took care of it as well. The leather inside and out couldn't be better. I put the glove on periodically and I have a habit of smelling the leather, my wife will see this and say "does it smell different today than it did yesterday?" She thinks I'm crazy, maybe she's right. Great memories though, Good topic.

[oldreliable]

These are great stories, guys! I like to smell the leather of my gloves too. I always say that life is no fun without an obsession.

John

[robin_buckeye]

My first glove was a MacGregor Robin Roberts. I don't acutually remember anything about how I got it, so I assume that my Dad got it for me. He probably got it at Jim Flynn's in Dayton, Ohio. He was a sportsman and usually shopped there.

In high school I got another glove and stopped using the MacGregor. I left it at home when I went to college. Years later my younger brother used it. He took it and it was stolen from his car while he was going to grad school at Sacramento State.

I replaced it with an identical glove from e-bay, but I wish I'd taken better care of the original.

Here's the only picture I have of the glove, taken in front of our house in 1964 when I played on the St. Christopher Baseball Team. I'm on the left with my best friend Larry.