By Mike Johnson
You don’t have to winterize a baseball mitt.
You don’t even realize your last use before the snow flies.
You just tuck it into its cubby like normal, then winter buries you before the next use.
It sits until spring.
The robins arrive, the grass greens and the cowhide glove slides onto your left hand like it never left.
Now it’s the Sorel boot’s turn for a long rest in the cubby.
It’s a fresh beginning.
You field grounders off the wall.
Play catch with your brothers.
Get back in the groove with pick-up games in the street.
Then the organized league schedules try-outs.
You’re picked by a team. Issued a uniform. Practices begin.
You make new friends. Share errors and heroics. By June, you’re deep into the regular season.
The cycle repeats.
A baseball glove isn’t a thing.
It’s an entity.
Like your favorite jeans or family dog, it’s comfortable and faithful.
You love them both.
Where you go, it goes.
You share history.
Your mitt carries a divine spark.
The spark ignites in those critical instants, bases loaded, two outs, when you need an extra six inches of diving reach.
A loyal, activated baseball glove turns an average player into a momentary hero.
It makes the fantastic catch, but the player gets the credit.
The mitt knows, but it never complains.
It accepted that deal when it accepted its stitching.
Leather lasts as long as a human life.
I know this from admiring baseball gloves at thrift shops.
Universally, they smell the same. Universally, I pick them up and deeply inhale, just to verify.
They all exhibit the same stiffness until you slide them on, bend the outward fingers inward and punch the pocket a couple times with your fist.
Now they’re game-ready, no matter their age.
You pick them up with reverence because you know you’re holding the repository of warm memories.
Deep, rich, personal memories.
You’re not holding leather, you’re holding legacy.
No one ever throws a baseball mitt away.
They’re generational.
They're passed to brothers, passed to children, passed to friends, passed to basement shelves.
Finally, they’re passed to thrift shops after grandparents die and houses are emptied to close the estate.
Baseball gloves witnessed it all.
Birth through death.
They earned their worn patina through moments of utility and futility.
Glory and story.
Deep, rich stories.
Important in the moment, but not quite life or death.
More like catch & release.
Baseball gloves are quietly patient, awaiting their next use, or more heart-wrenching, their next owner.
They rode bicycle handlebars, tiny and fat fingers, dugout benches, the tops of heads, baseball bat handles and on rainy days, the rumps of kids with no other dry option.
They were greased. They were grass-stained. They wore a mishmash of old and new laces.
They were both loved and ignored.
Days turned to decades.
Spring turned to winter.
They never know which will be their very last inning.
People too, are just as unknowing.
You never realize that the last use of that mitt will be your last use of that mitt.
You tuck it into its cubby like normal, then death, just like winter, buries you before your next use.
Then the glove sits alone, unused, unnoticed, unable to share all it witnessed, until the house is emptied.
Then it’s moved to the thrift store cemetery.
Piled in a box with other gloves, forgotten, discounted far below its true value.
Far below its contribution.
It deserves better.
That’s why, when MY ending, launches a new beginning in the great beyond, that baseball glove will be packed into MY cubby, with me.
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More: Handle Time Travel With Kid Gloves
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