The Story Was Always in the Glove

UNBOXED with Doug Glanville

I came across the glove that would end up on the cover of my 2009 book, The Game from Where I Stand. Since that time, it has lived in a box I set aside especially for this glove, clearly labeled, never to be confused with the other bins or memorabilia. I am not entirely sure why I singled it out. Maybe I wanted to honor the significance of the object that was the first image anyone would see when they picked up my book.

The glove says a lot. It was my defensive tool, my identity really. Drafted as a center fielder, I had to be known for my ability to catch the ball. This particular glove came from my early professional days. It was not one of the familiar MLB brands of that time like Rawlings or Wilson. It was an SSK, a lesser-known Japanese brand in the American market, that still got the job done.

It was always simple when it came to my glove choices. As a kid, it usually came down to the name stamped in the palm. A Steve Carlton or Mike Schmidt model seemed to make the glove perform magic. The cursive name was not an autograph caught outside the stadium, but the clean, black cursive signature pressed into the leather, like a brand from the hide itself.

There is an art to taking care of a glove. Most of it, I ignored. I had glove oil, but before I turned pro, it lived mostly at the bottom of my baseball bag collecting dirt from my spikes. So I leaned on my big brother for care guidance. When I complained about how stiff a glove was or how long it took to break it in, he would just slap it on the driveway and back over it with my mom’s Oldsmobile Delta 88.