The glovesters last glove.....

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The glovesters last glove.....

Postby theglovester » July 11th, 2013, 8:59 am

Well kinda sad topic but mortality eventually sets in as you near 50, and I wanted one more glove. I had worn my others out, but still cherish them. from a cheapo Matty alou, to dad's Warren Hacker college glove that I chewed on the strings as a 9 yr old, to a wilson Dave Cash, to my high school glove XFCB17. Dang, Rawlings must have sold a boat load of them. I have had this glove for 5-6 years and hopefully will pass it on down the lineage, Yep I have sired lineage.

It is a Rawlings as I am a Rawlings man, a Pro Preferred Long string of numbers??? what ever.. but when I got it the first thing I did was tear it apart. Laces gone, basket web (WHY?) trashed, A wilson A2 web, with a Mantle rolled web, crotch relaced solid in a "U" shape, yanked out the goofy plastic thingy in the thumb so the glove looks like a cup instead of a funnel, I catch in the palm and not on the fingers. When did they start making gloves looking like a "V" with the flared fingers??? Makes the pocket smaller and just looks goofy that way. And the crowning touch, the Infamous "Drokester 4" patch ala Dazzy Vance, hand embroidered by myself.

If you think this is going to the nth extreme, read "What is a Baseball Glove" Nuf Ced.ImageImageImage
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Re: The glovesters last glove.....

Postby Mr. Mitt » July 11th, 2013, 12:27 pm

I know where you're coming from, Don. I love my old playing gloves, but they're beat to hell. Now that I'm older and don't play much any longer, besides an occasional game of catch, I began looking for one final glove that will last me the rest of my days. Something I can admire for myself when I slip it on and pound it with a glove mallet when no one is around or feel proud of it if I ever get between the lines again (I am hopeful to attend a fantasy camp sometime, hopefully sooner than later).

My dream glove, or mitt as it is, has always been Rawlings PRODCT basemitt. They're uniquely designed and super cool. Besides that, they have a great history in the game and all who have used them absolutely loved them. They've been in and out of production over the years, so when used ones pop up on eBay, they skyrocket given the lack of supply and surprisingly huge demand. There are several collectors of modern gloves who specifically concentrate on the PRODCT. Anyway, I was fortunate to have this one made for me several years ago by Rawlings. A stealth black PRODCT in Pro Preferred leather. Black all around, including the Rawlings logo and my name. It's a great mitt and I'm so happy with my choice. You know, your first glove will always be special, but I don't recall ever hearing anyone wax poetic about their last. Hopefully I'm able to live with this one for a very long time. If it turns out not to be that long, at least it brought me a little joy.
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Re: The glovesters last glove.....

Postby softball66 » July 11th, 2013, 3:12 pm

Well Droke as in Broke(in), Rawlings may get after you for defacing one of its gloves when actually you just put a happy face on the "preferred."
I cannot, for the life of me remember my high school glove except maybe it was a Rawlings JG. Next one I remember buying was an XFCB-17 Brooks.
Tried a Nokona BM76 for awhile and didn't like it for softball (the mod squad boys love that model though). My "carry-to-grave" glove is still my gigantic
AMG700K. Swoops down like a bald eagle on its prey.
Jerry, that DCT was a honey and Mantle used a couple at least when he shifted to 1b. But whatever got into Latina's mine when he termed it
the "double ca thud." Oh well.
I'm reading a book that includes baseball short stories and two contain glove love stories. One, I thought, touching was the kid who lost the writer's
precious Bob Feller Wilson. I'll share some of these next few days.
:wink:
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Re: The glovesters last glove.....

Postby theglovester » July 11th, 2013, 10:35 pm

It sucks to get old, I played in an alumni baseball game at high school at 46 and although I could catch it at third, the arm is a noodle... WHERE THE HELL DID IT GO???? I could still hit a tad, but I had to much up and down and not enough forward when I tried to run...I knew the playing days were over.. sad.. gives me a Double Ca thud in my throat.. (Had one of those, totally cool mitts) Now I play catch with my boy and hope he doesn't throw it to hard...

Oh, when he was 6 I had a glovesmith glove made for him, custom made and the guys that had a hand in making the glove signed the hang tag.. Yeah pretty neat Birdie Ralph Ed, Mary etc...I wanted to make sure his first true glove was bought by daddy, ten years later it's finally broken in...Call it Glove insurance for your son, just in case something happened to me before he needed one.

Not like today, When did it become important to say the A2000 is Japan made and coveted??? whats up with that?? I know they have been Japanese made for a while but whats the big deal?? well I was in a sporting goods store the other day and spied a new A2.. wife looking at sneakers so I wandered over, I used my best Confederate Gentleman Cuss words, Damn glove was made in Viet Nam.... I know the pro preferred was not US made but best Rawlings had when buying so I conceeded RELUCTANTLY.. Guess that explains why we like the gloves of the 50's on back...
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Re: The glovesters last glove.....

Postby theglovester » July 12th, 2013, 12:41 pm

Sweet DCT Jerry, and thats the cool thing about that glove and mine is it is the way WE WANTED IT TO BE!! Didn't have to please anyone but ourselves. Many thanks again for the D&M you sent my way over 15 years ago... still got it!!
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Re: The glovesters last glove.....

Postby softball66 » July 12th, 2013, 5:08 pm

As promised, here are a few excerpts from the baseball book: "Anatomy of Baseball" a compendium of short stories written by some heady types as John Thorn and Roger Angell.
This is from the chapter "Nostalgia: "The 1950s and My Mitts" penned by Christopher Buckley.
"My amazing new Wilson Bob Feller, however, was so supple I had no problems breaking it in. My only concern was forming a big and sure pocket. The first thing I did was ride my bike down to Jeflick's Saddlery on De la Vina Street and buy, for a quarter, a rawhide string, one stronger and thicker than the leather the factory used to lace the tips of the fingers together. For my taste, mitts were always laced too loosely, and on any glove I owned I pulled them tightly together. I used a metal pick that looked almost like a dentist's tool, which came from a set we had for cracking walnuts and digging out the meat. I poked through the new rawhide string and then tied it off tight on the little finger. This curved the fingers inward and made a deep pocket from which any ball was unlikely to escape. Then, as many did, I placed a softball inside the glove, tied the fingers around it with string or rawhide, and placed the mitt beneath my mattress for a few days. Thus, the pocket was formed. . . .
"My glove and I were celebrities for a week or so; I had the newest and best mitt at school, and while I did not openly gloat, I must have beaming the whole day long. . . ."I was sure the mitt was magic, and that extra confidence just may have helped with an amazing play or two."
TRAGEDY STRIKES!
. . . "We were playing work-ups after school, and I was waiting for the second bus home so I could get my "ups" when the bus arrived and started to load. I ran to the edge of the field to collect my books and sweater when a friend's younger brother, Timmy Armour, asked to borrow my glove. I said I had to leave but he kept pleading that he was stuck in right field and unless caught a fly ball, he'd never get up. He swore he'd put my glove back in the eighth-grade classroom in my desk. All this time, and I hadn't learned a thing about holding on to your mitt. I loaned it to him. And of course it was not in my desk the next morning. I checked the coat hooks in back of the room where some kids hung their gloves -- nothing. I caught up with Timmy at lunch and asked for my glove. He said he'd thrown it in the breezeway by our classroom, where left our lunch bags before school. I reminded him he'd promised to put it in my desk, but he brushed me off and ran off to play as if my mitt were nothing more than a half-eaten five-cent bag of Fritos. I wanted to ring his neck. Forty-six years later and counting, I still want wring his neck! No apologies, not the slightest attempt at restitution, as if such could be made for that sun-yellow steer hide wonder."
The story gets a little worse. But it shows how gloves of our youth were treasured. And, some lost. Remember this tale the next time you bid on a Bob Feller Wilson glove. :(
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Re: The glovesters last glove.....

Postby theglovester » July 14th, 2013, 9:59 pm

somebody holler at Jerry! there is a DCT mantle on ebay!!! looks pretty nice BIT under $200!! hope you get it if you want it Jerry!
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Re: The glovesters last glove.....

Postby Number9 » July 15th, 2013, 12:36 am

I just had the sad realization that my last glove for my own personal use (non-use, let's be honest), was purchased when I was 24. Bummer!
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Re: The glovesters last glove.....

Postby estaples » July 15th, 2013, 7:56 am

Well that's not soooo bad William, don't remember my very first glove, think I was about 6-7 when I got it, my first year of t-ball was at 8, and that's probably the last year I used it, think it was some real cheap plastic type model glove. Then when hit little league, got some real leather, pretty sure it was again a very cheap Rawlings, got so comfortable with it though I used that one all the way up till 10/11th grade, somewhere in there, was always on the left side of the infield so didn't mind a very small glove at all;)

Then around my junior year of HS I picked up a Nokona, and wow, what a glove!!! Lets just say that's the one I still use today, now I still consider myself a young pup at 31 years old, but that makes my last glove purchase about a decade and a half old, I was about 16, and remember saving to get that $140 for that glove all summer blueberry raking, man, if any of you have done that for work, then you know why the glove was precious to me:) lol. Believe it or not, I played ball collegiately in a very good program where each year each team member got any pair of spikes, one aluminum bat, 4 wooden bats, and any glove they wanted, lets just say, I never ordered a glove!!! :). That nokona is just as good, beautiful, and soft as the day I bought it 15 years ago.
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