Legacy

Baseball Gloves—Symbols of Love

By Karl Priest Charleston Gazette 3-11-1986 p. 7A

The other kids made fun of my first baseball glove. No wonder, it had only four fingers. The last of a style, it was all I had to introduce me to a lifelong pleasure and I loved it.

When I outgrew it, an older friend gave me one of his gloves, black from dirt and oil, and extremely flexible. It was so flexible that the fingers would bend downward toward the palm. Once, when I tried to catch a fly ball, the ball missed the curled fingers and smacked me on the forehead. Still, I loved the friendship that glove symbolized.

During the Christmas of my first year in high school, I coveted a glove I’d seen at a sporting goods store. Later I found out my father negotiated for a discount and bought me the glove. I remember watching him walking through the damp, dreary housing project streets, coming home from work, carrying that glove. He sacrificed his pride and loved me through that glove.

After I was discharged from the Navy, that glove was worn out, and money was tight. I wanted to play college baseball, so I bought a cheap, discount-store glove to use. The pain was terrible everytime I caught a ball, but I love the memory of college camaraderie that glove took me through.

Finally, the coach of a men’s summer league team subsidized an expensive glove for me. It was the closest to being a professional player I ever got. I loved the success that glove represented.

I kept that glove more than ten years. Then, at age 37, and able to afford a glove, I retired the old glove and bought a new one. I felt like a kid again. I loved it!

None of the love through a baseball glove can compare to the feeling I got when I handed my son his first glove. I wonder what love I will feel when I see the fingers of my first grandchild slide into a baseball glove.

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The following was not part of the original article:
Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? Matthew 7:9-11

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