“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”
-Rogers Hornsby
My true affection for baseball began in 4th grade. After a solid school day and long walk home from the bus stop, most afternoons I would retire to our “shop” – a corrugated tin shed that rested behind our house. There I tinkered with my bicycle – or I should say bicycles, plural, for I had a few. Smelling of WD-40, with a crescent wrench in my hands, I spent many afternoons working on my battered bikes while listening to Vin Scully broadcast Dodger games. Our sterling neighbor Mrs. Williams loved baseball and kept her radio positioned next to an outdoor PA system so she could hear games while she worked outside. The whole neighborhood got to listen, and that was a good thing. For me, the sound of baseball was intoxicating.
At about this same time in school we began to play baseball in earnest (we actually played softball – but we called it baseball). From early spring through the end of the school year, we played baseball with abandon, at P.E., during recess, and on weekends in the dirt fields at home. At school, I was the only kid who didn’t have a baseball glove of my own. I always had to borrow one when we played. One day, out on a shopping trip with my dear mom (we were prowling the aisles of what we used to call a “Dime Store”), I found a glove. I begged my mom to buy it for me. She did, reluctantly.
The next day my triumphant entry into the world of elementary school baseball glory was met with ridicule and shame. The other kids teased me mercilessly, for my new glove was nothing more than a cheap toy, unfit for the rigors of baseball in the 4th grade. I was crushed. But soon things changed…
A week later my dad came home from work with a surprise for me – a real baseball glove. The best baseball glove that I’d ever seen. It was a second-hand J. C. Higgins brand Bob Allison Signature Model 1646. I believe Dad got it from a friend of his at work. Well broken-in with an old-school leather patina, it looked like it had already caught a thousand fly balls. I loved it! At school it gained me instant respect from the other boys. When I took to the field with this seasoned glove on my hand, I looked like I’d been playing ball for years. And I was in heaven.
That glove became my most valued possession. With a black marker I wrote my name on it in large letters. All was good until my glove was stolen later when I was in 6th grade. I had left it at school, and during our annual Halloween Carnival some low-life yobs infiltrated our classroom and nabbed it along with some other baseball equipment. I was heartbroken. After the word went out that my precious glove had been stolen, another student saw my glove in his hooligan neighbor kid’s backyard, and he stole it back for me (I will always be grateful – thank you Raymond Laye).
In recent years I’ve done some research on my vintage glove. J. C. Higgins was a brand name used by the Sears & Roebuck Company beginning in 1908. The brand name was used on much of Sears sporting goods up until 1961. John Higgins was an actual Sears employee, working as a bookkeeping manager and company comptroller until retiring in 1930. For some reason Sears’ executives liked his name and asked to use it, adding the “C” since Higgins did not have a middle name.
My glove was a Bob Allison signature model. Bob Allison played 13 seasons in the Majors (from 1958 to 1970) with the Washington Senators and the Minnesota Twins. He was the American League Rookie of the Year in 1959, and was named to the All-Star team three times, in 1959, 1963, and 1964. I believe my Bob Allison signature glove is a 1960 model.
I loved my old baseball glove. I used it playing ball all through elementary school, then in junior high, and finally in high school my sophomore and senior years. My daughter even used it for a time when she played ball. And she and I carried it to Texas Ranger’s games, always arriving early to watch batting practice while enjoying our hot dogs, with gloves at the ready just in case a fly ball flew our way.
That old glove sits on my desk right now as I type these words – loving leather soaked in warm personal history. The memories are so thick I have to brush them away from my face.
Thank you Dad – I love