I started playing baseball with an old brown, horse leather, thirties style mitt with fingers unlaced unlike more contemporary gloves. My dad had the glove when he was a kid and had passed it on to me with great pride saying he played with Bo-bo Ogden in the same park that I would play. I rubbed butter in the old glove coaxing a little more life into it making it more supple and pliant. The glove was functional enough but an embarrassing piece of equipment to me when I walked out on the field at Crosby Park. My classmates had brand new gloves and my face burned red when the guys chuckled at the old leather glove.

But I loved baseball just like all true red-blooded American kids should. And I wanted to play ball. Something deep inside me wouldn’t let the taunting make me quit. I played what we called farm team with that old glove and worked as hard as any youngster can to learn the fundamentals of the game from Chib Clukey a fair minded coach with a sense of discretion about how to handle a poor kid.

The next year Little League was starting and I don’t recall the exact process but I was chosen somehow to play for the Dexter Shoe team. Clyde Richards was the coach with Kenny Pooler as his assistant. I went to the first practice with the old horsehide glove determined to make the best of it.

The next Saturday my dad took me to H.L. Tilson’s hardware store where he took me to a display of baseball mitts and said:

“Pick one.”

I was shocked, picked up a mediocre mid-priced glove and looked up.

“How ‘bout this one Dad?”

“Nah son. Take this one.” My Dad had chosen the top of the line Wilson, the best glove in the store.

“Really?”

“Yup, really. Just promise me you’ll play the best you can and take care of it. OK?”

“Yeah dad, thanks”

I played as hard and learned as much as any kid could about baseball. Remember how a new glove was broken in? I wrapped and strapped the fingers around a baseball inside the pocket of the glove and kept it that way between games? And of course I still rubbed the glove with yellow greasy butter. Just made sense to me and dad.
Fred