Vintage Baseball Glove Forum Contest - September 2011

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Re: Vintage Baseball Glove Forum Contest - September 2011

Postby okdoak » September 30th, 2011, 2:33 pm

I refuse to accept the fact that my first baseball glove is 50 years old now. It's just not possible. I mean that when I got it on my 7th birthday, things that were 50 years old were relics from an impossibly outdated past. The Titanic. Silent movies. Bi-planes. Forget television, they didn't even have radio back then. And on my family's television set I was watching an astronaut orbit our planet in a Mercury rocket. We were entering the Space Age and you couldn't get more modern than that.

I took my new glove with me everywhere I went. Hung it on the handlebars of my bike. It slept next to me on my pillow. Eventually, the neighborhood kids noticed it. I was reluctant to let them touch it. It was brand new. But I forked it over. "That is a boss glove, but it's stiff. You gotta break it in. Hit it in the pocket with a bat a bunch of times." "Eh, just put a ball in it and wrap rubber bands around it." "I knew a kid who sprayed water on his, rubber banded it and put it in the freezer overnight. Turned out perfect." Hmmm...freezing it into shape made good sense to me. But not to my Mom. No way would she allow a baseball glove in her freezer. I put a ball in it and rubber banded it every night before bed for weeks. Still stiff. My older brother's friend Eddie was a tough kid but he genuinely enjoyed helping other kids solve their problems. "Lemme see it" he said right before furiously pounding it with his fist. "There, that's better. Right?" I had to admit it was a little softer after I got over the shock of seeing my pristine glove being punched out. My Dad finally solved the riddle. "I'll bet it will break in after you actually use it. I mean to catch a ball and such." Well, I thought, it's probably going to get dirty that way. But by that time I was willing to try anything.

My brothers and I were lucky enough to have a park a half block away from our house and also to have a lot of other kids close to our age in our neighborhood. There was no real baseball diamond but there was plenty of room to improvise one. When we could manage to get enough kids together, we chose up sides. 4 or 5 on a side was a good turnout but not enough to afford a first baseman, so we played "pitcher's hand's out" (if the ball gets back to the pitcher before you reach base, you're out.) If only a few kids showed up we played 500. The batter fungoed balls and you earned points for catching the ball on a fly, one hop, or a crummy grounder (like I usually hit.) You got to bat when you reached 500 points. When nobody showed up, my older brother and me took turns hitting to each other. With no one around to mock us we were free to practice our favorite fielding styles. My brother liked to catch the ball behind his back and actually got really good at it. I'd play shallow and try to catch the ball over my shoulder like Willy Mays. Once in a great while I did. My brother was a good hitter, though and took it personally when I played him shallow. "You better back up" he'd yell before he invariably launched one that landed 100 feet behind me. I doubt if few things gave him more pleasure than watching me running after that ball.

The first thing I noticed about my new glove was that terrific leather smell. That in itself became a ritual for me. Put the glove on. Smell the web. Okay, I'm good to go now. Next, my eyes feasted on the cool picture of the player in the pocket. Then the player's signature (in script!) on the little finger. Enos Slaughter. Wait, who the heck is Enos Slaughter and where does he play on the Braves?! Yes, being a kid from Milwaukee, I was hoping for Eddie Mathews or Hank Aaron or Johnny Logan or Spahn, Burdette, Buhl or... But it really didn't matter, I loved my glove just the same. Years later I found out that Enos did play briefly for the Braves. Of course he'll always be remembered as a Cardinal, but he still was a Brave (at least for a couple of weeks). So that made it okay. Plus, there's this...A year or two after I got my glove, one of my brother's friends came looking for him on a Saturday morning. He was an early riser and always long gone before I dragged myself out of bed. He also was smart. Mom and Dad couldn't give him chores if they couldn't find him. That finally dawned on me as I was cutting the grass or washing Dad's car one day. Anyway, when I told Billy that he was gone, I was shocked to hear him ask what I was up to. One of my big brother's friends actually wanted to hang out with me? Maybe I wasn't such a dork after all. "You collect baseball cards, don't you?" Heck yes! I spent every nickel of my allowance on 1962 Topps. Wanna see 'em? "Well, just grab a big stack of them and get your bike. I'm flipping against some kids and I only have a few of mine left." Okay, I'm on it! It never dawned on me that maybe the reason he had so few cards was that he lost them through bad flipping and that mine could be next. That thought hit home when I watched him lose two of my favorite cards right off the bat. My Mathews, then my Aaron All-Star. Jeez, I must have CHUMP tattooed on my forehead. But then he started to win. And win. And could not lose. He cleaned those three kids out down to their last cards. Gave me back mine, plus a bunch that he didn't want. I swear that he ended up with a 59 and 60 Mantle along with a lot other good ones. The ones he gave me were odd ones in styles I'd never seen before. One was a beat up Enos Slaughter (a 54 Bowman I'd learn years later). Hey, he's the guy on my glove! I read the back of the card when I got home. Wow, he was a good ballplayer. Good hitter and fielder, always hustled. And...no way...his birthday is the same as mine! Ah, it all fits together now.

I still have my glove and the leather is still nice and supple. I take it out and condition it once in a great while. It has my name and address in marker on the heel. My Mom wrote it there because like most kids I lost stuff and she knew how important my glove was to me. She's been gone almost 20 years now and I automatically think of her when I look at it. My younger bro's name and initials are too. Eventually I got a bigger glove that was hinged in the newer style (an A2000 knock off) and I had to give him my old one as part of the deal. I may have stolen it back from him. Hey, I had it first anyway. It's a low end kids model Dubow, the kind that I skip over on ebay without blinking. There must be thousands of them out there. It's the one glove I own that's not part of my collection. And the only one that I know the whole story of.

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Re: Vintage Baseball Glove Forum Contest - September 2011

Postby vintagebrett » October 1st, 2011, 8:53 am

Thanks for everyone's contributions - I really enjoyed all of the responses and the time that each one you put into what you wrote. I'll put the names in a hat this afternoon and have my son pull one out.
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Re: Vintage Baseball Glove Forum Contest - September 2011

Postby vintagebrett » October 2nd, 2011, 7:20 am

Kenny Wel - you're the winner for the month! Thanks for all the stories/poems - loved them all.

October contest coming soon!
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Re: Vintage Baseball Glove Forum Contest - September 2011

Postby Kenny Wel » October 2nd, 2011, 8:11 am

Thank you, but I won by luck.

All of the stories were great and I enjoyed each one tremendously. I thought they were all more deserving than my own story.

Ken
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Re: Vintage Baseball Glove Forum Contest - September 2011

Postby okdoak » October 2nd, 2011, 12:40 pm

You deserve it Ken, especially after having to give up Carl's old glove. Bet he was glad to have it back but it would have been really tough for me to let it go, too.
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Re: Vintage Baseball Glove Forum Contest - September 2011

Postby stockbuddy » October 2nd, 2011, 6:19 pm

Guys, Great glove stories. Enjoyed each one of them. Ken a glovely gesture on your part.

Kudos Brett on the glove stories topic.

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Re: Vintage Baseball Glove Forum Contest - September 2011

Postby Kenny Wel » October 5th, 2011, 4:49 pm

I received the jersey in the mail today, and it is fabulous. Guys, when they are available for purchase, buy with confidence that you are getting a good product.

so here is the tale of another that got away...
There is a "junk" store not far from my house that my wife would not let me stop at one day, telling me "You don't need any more old junk..". So one day on my own I ventured in to see what was there. There really was not much but old junk, but there was a 5 gallon bucket with 3 bats sticking up out of it. Two of the bats were basically worth only firewood, but the third was interesting. My first impression was how thick the bat was all the way down the handle and how heavy it was. Next I noticed that the handle was cracked and it had been nailed several times, and that it had apparently been used to hit stones. The embosed label was faint, but read "Victor Sporting Goods" with the wing design. Being in its condition, I put it back in the bucket and moved on. That night I told my boys about my covert visit and the bat. We happened to be by the store when it was open shortly after, and we went in to see it. The kids were also disapointed in the condition but thought that it was cool, and again I left it behind. But I never really stopped thinking about it. So then I win with shirt with the Victor design, and I think that it must be a sign! I stopped in to the store yesterday, but the bat was gone. I'm just hoping it went to a good home.

Ken
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