Who Said This?

[softball66]

What '50s ballplayer said this: "I used to take about as tender care of my glove as a boy ever did, and I applied all the oils and saddle soaps and other junk that was supposed to keep it pliable and make it last. But this was really more of a loving ritual than a practical means of improving the glove.
By the time I had become a pro I had decided I did not want a soft glove because it would let a ball through, while a stiff finger glove would more likely stop the ball. So I gave up my boyhood winter pastime of oiling and caressing my glove. I would sometimes actually dip the glove in water (what sacrilege!) to stiffen the leather. Gloves nowadays are a whole lot bigger than they were when I broke into the game and you depend on them even more to keep a ball from getting by."

[softball66]

This guy took Chuck Stobbs WAY downtown.
You'd like to have one of his endorsed gloves. His discussion on his glove was rather typical of the players of his day...well...and later.

[wareagle34]

Thanks for the Stobbs hint, it was the one and only Mickey Mantle.

[wareagle34]

Here's one for you. This player bought his glove for ten dollars in 1941 when he came up. By 1949 it was perilously close to having terminal rot. Every year he had Harry Latina repair it, along with a shoemaker near the stadium who worked on it two or three times a season. It was a relic from another era, when ballplayers used much smaller gloves barely bigger than their hands. The clubhouse gag was that this glove should have gone to Cooperstown in 1918, the year this ballplayer was born. Who is he?




WAR EAGLE!

[worldwin]

A shot in the dark...

Pee Wee Reese?

[wareagle34]

Worldwin wins the prize. Taken from the book Summer of '49. a great read.





WAR EAGLE!

[worldwin]

Right on!

[softball66]

Correct on the Mick. That was from a biog that Rawlings sponsored in paperback, I think called "The Making of a Ballplayer." This is also the book that describes Mickey's first spring training and Crosetti makes him throw away his Playmaker that he'd brought along.
On the player who came up in 1941, maybe Phil Rizzuto. They said his old glove was pretty trashy and I think it fell apart one day on a line drive and his fellow players didn't think it was so funny as in the past. He got a new glove after that. I think they also put a dead frog or mouse in his glove when the players used to leave them out on the field when they came into bat.

[softball66]

I hadn't read that post on Reese being the man with the ungolden glove. I'm pretty sure the Yankees' Rizzuto's beater glove was in the same shape. What is it about these shortstops?
The Mantle book and mine has a prninted Rawlings Logo and subtitled "Rawlings Special Edition," is titled "The Education of a Baseball Player." If you can find this book, I would recommend it. It's got the "What is a Baseball Glove" creed on the back cover.
Mantle is pictured on the cover with a Rawlings bar web glove that looks strange like a vertical piece is overlapping on the back forefinger.

[softball66]

I love this.
"Coleman and other Yankees were aware of Rizzuto's fears, including that of small creatures, and while Coleman said he didn't play practical jokes on the shortstop -- "I was nice to him," said Coleman -- he would wait in anticipation when somebody did. One time, another player placed a dead mouse in Rizzuto's glove. The instant Rizzuto felt the mouse, Coleman recalled through laughter, "The glove went straight up in the air."

[softball66]

I thought maybe it was Rizzuto you were talking about with the $10 glove. Here's from "Summer of 49"...
(Rizzuto)...
"They also continued to tease him about his glove. It was practically a museum piece. He had bought it for ten dollars when he first broke in. By 1949 it was perilously close to having terminal rot. Every year Harry Latina, who was the Rawlings glove man, repaired it. In addition, a shoemaker near the Stadium worked on it two or three times a year. It was a relic from an era when ballplayers used much smaller gloves, barely bigger than th eir hands. ..."
Bobby Brown loaned him a bigger glove one time but Rizzuto tried it and couldn't use it.
There's another great story about a guy with a beater from this same era. None other than the great Dodger 3bman Billy Cox, some who claimed he was better than Brooks Robinson. Cox supposedly used a glove from Whalen Department store, that no one else would touch. Casey Stengel called him a "@#*" acrobat.