A Reflection: A Boy and His Glove

This was a ball glove. I couldn’t imagine that anyone had a glove that had the history or depth of understanding, - one might call it magic, that this glove did. I don’t really remember how I came about it, where I first used it or who if anyone actually said I could use it. All I knew was that compared to the other guys glove’s, almost certainly bought at Murray’s Army Navy store, or the huge toy store on Central Ave. and Tuckahoe Rd. or Klein’s bargain basement also on Central Ave. in Yonkers; this glove was possibly from Babe Ruth or Lou Gherig themselves. It didn’t need any breaking-in like the new Rawlings or Spalding or Wilson models. No, this was as worn as leather could be and still be useful. When it lay quiet, it seemed to lay almost perfectly flat, with a perfect hinge line from the top of the outfielder’s pocket, on the thumb side, down to pinky side of the palm. The ample pocket made the near cushion-less palm worth it. Although you almost had to keep your index finger outside of the glove in order to help dull the impact of the occasional “liner” right at you and between the head and waist! The perfect tones of cowhide in brown black and tan almost certainly born of N.Y. Yankees glory were the supplest yet practical leather I had ever touched. Maybe it was my Dad’s glove originally; it could be 50 or 60 years old. The physical math making Dad a third again his actual age didn’t enter into these thoughts, at the time. No, I preferred to think as I reached into the pantry box of shoes, sneakers, boots, ice skates and balls and gloves, one spring day, that I had stumbled upon a gem. This gem empowered me to make catches and stop balls that no-one else could. It didn’t matter that most of them would be with a tennis ball, a soft-ball or a hard ball off the fungo bat of one of my buddies. You see, my organized baseball career was cut short, before my 13^th birthday, by a “debilitating” fear of being hit by a pitched ball. It was not real good for your little league batting average if you were bailing out of “the box” 90% of the time, and watching strikes go by the rest of the time. – No matter, at the time, in my games I could still be Mickey Mantle, or more recently Bobby Murcer chasing down balls in center field in Yankee Stadium or even career man Gene Michael, scooping’em up at shortstop and fling’em over to first, just getting the runner by a step.

It was an August morning like any other August morning. I’d wake up to the sound of the waves lapping up to the South Boston seashore. It was the distant sound, the slightly delayed sound one got used to with the tide low and a couple hundred yards from the sea wall. Yes, this would be a good morning! You could sit in the sunshine at one corner of the breakfast table and feel the warmth of what would be a clear hot August day. Or, you could step outside the screen door and plant your barefoot on the wood plank walkway, still wet with the morning dew, - and get the last cool taste of the day.

After wiping my feet on the twine runway and taking a peek over the second story wood railing at the beach and ocean below, I dashed back inside the beach apartment grabbed the glove off the couch, and the tennis ball and headed down to the beach.

There were a couple of “good mornings” on my way down the stairs. Maybe there would be another early riser or one of the high school girls, hired by Jeanne Stevenson; who came up every summer to open and run the Gurnet Inn, along with her husband Jack, from Southern Pines North Carolina, to clean the rooms and make the beds. It would be a couple of years before I would notice them. At 12 I was more interested in the double header, in my mind, between the Yankees and the Red Sox. I was either the Yankee or Red Sox pitching ace of the day, Jim Lonborg and Mel Stottlemeyer come to mind. I bulleted tennis ball from no more than 20 ft. towards the WWII pill box thick, concrete, sea wall. Anticipating its return I’d make a false step in one direction –or the other-much like the tennis player getting a jump on an opponent’s serve. Grounders, two or three hoppers, line drives- it didn’t matter- I became deft at fielding them all. The “crowd roar” would vary in intensity depending on the strategic situation and consequences of each pitch. The flexibility and dexterity needed to snag the bad bounces you’d get off of the sea shells or tiny moguls left in the soft sand, by the receding tide, would thrill the stands. The Yankees won most of those contests during those Augusts, right there in the hot bed of New England enthusiasts, and bitter Red Sox fans; although the morning Boston Globe and the box scores therein told a different story during the late 1960’s.