by Cowboy7130 » April 21st, 2008, 2:41 pm
I have some interest in RBG36 gloves, for the following reasons:
1. the fact that my favorite 80's player was Dale Murphy (unsung is an understatement!), and the Dale Murphy RBG36 may have been the most widely sold Rawlings of all time. They pop up on ebay almost daily, so I am always perusing them.
2. as a high school coach in rural Texas, many of my players used more modern RBG36's and RBG36B's, with the Ken Griffey endorsement. The 12" and 12 1/2" were all-around, "generic" gloves that could be used at numerous positions. In fact, two of my players "inherited" RBG36 models from their older sisters who had played softball on the school team, and in rural Texas, "if it was good enough for Sis, then it's good enough for Bubba."
3. My son chose an RBG36 as his "pitcher's glove" last year when he needed a glove in a hurry, while he was breaking in a new Mizuno. (It lasted two games and a bullpen session; it folded over backwards on a hard throw from the catcher.)
In my experience, the RBG36 is an easily broken-in, too easily broken glove. It was because of several failures of RBG36's on my high school team that I began to research better gloves for my players, which led me to ebay, which led me to glove forums, which led me here ....
In a separate thread last year about my OR 520 Dale Murphy gloves (RBG36 clones, I believe) I lamented the fact that the RBG36 has gone downhill the past few years. Several of the forum took exception to my comment, saying that the RBG36 was one of the best workhorse gloves in recent glove history (my wording here), and a bunch of the active players in this forum said they had a trusted RBG36 in their warbags today, either as a gamer or a backup.
I was surprised.
Then, I consulted the Source. According to the Catalog Source book, the RBG36 during the mid-80's was a mid-priced, Murphy-endorsed glove that was probably of higher quality than the modern department store gloves that my kids were buying and using. AND I noticed that during a couple of years, the RBG 36 had two models available with two different endorsers, Murphy and Ripken, I believe, with one being much less expensive than the other.
This then, is probably the answer to my personal RBG36 puzzle. Why had so many people sworn by this glove for so long, when I thought it was so shabby? Probably because the gloves being lauded were the higher-end, older gloves that were better than the newer ones. My bet is that your mid-80's, $75 RBG36 is a better glove than my son's 2006 $29 Academy special.
JOE - that is a beautiful glove. I can tell from the picture that the leather is firm and uniform, and that the glove is in pretty good shape, unlike the flimsy, mustard yellow glove that is sitting in the bottom of my son's closet!
Yes, I still have my first glove.
