A Game of Catch
Back and forth, give and take, throw and catch...an ancient rhythm.
Yesterday, when my daughter showed me the old baseball glove she found in the park, I felt a pang. It was obviously a well-used and cherished object that someone must be missing. I know because I still miss my old glove, gone, alas, many a year.
“For people of certain age,” I said, “that is a sacred object—one’s first baseball glove. Someone will be looking for it!”
She assured me it had been in the underbrush for a long time, perhaps over the winter, and was now showing signs of mildew. Restoration to the owner seems to be a lost cause, but not restoration to proper use and appreciation. She’ll give it a good home. Perhaps it will become my granddaughter’s first glove? Now it has a new story.
There is nothing like the patina of the first well-loved, oiled, shaped, and lovingly used baseball glove. It is an object that is more than the sum of its simple parts. It is experiences, memories, relationships as well as sport. For an American, it is a talisman of youth. Ask around about memories of first gloves and people will wax eloquent and elegiac, even if they no longer possess the glove. Like me. My wife, the jock in the family (three-season varsity athlete, high school and college) had a first baseman’s mitt. It too is gone. Longing for its return persists.
It begins with throwing and catching. Whatever happened to having a simple game of catch—such a pastoral scene simply throwing the baseball back and forth and trying to sting dad’s hand. Dad still had his own decrepit but loved glove—a first baseman’s mitt—with torn leather and laces that barely held it together. He also had a catcher’s mitt with only a divot in the middle to stop a pitch, like a bird’s nest. Baseball gloves have improved greatly since dad’s era, and mine.
My brother and I enjoyed a leisurely game of catch out front of the house—a rite of spring. What a pleasing rhythm of tossing back and forth, periodically attempting a fastball, a change-up, or even a curve ball. But what did we know about the ineffable Bernoulli-effect of those laces? We experimented with our grips and spins and wind-ups and often had to chase the errant throws down the road to retrieve them, unless the dog got there first.
Eventually, there was little league and the whole game of baseball. I played in our town league for several years on the Dodgers and White Sox, coached by dads in town. No doubt they had their own varsity days informing them., “Atta boy!” was often the extent of their coaching. I languished in right field, where no one hit the ball. I was Ferdinand the bull amidst the clover. This was not playing catch. So I tried out for a place in the infield: behind the plate as catcher, a pivotal position. My grandfather decided to support my desire and bought me a fantastic catcher’s mitt. Oh, the smell of its leather! The padding! The heft! I recall breaking it in: oiling it to soften the pocket, clinching a baseball in the webbing, putting it under my mattress to press it into a shape that would snag the zingers thrown by our pitchers.
On offense, I was not a heavy hitter. I specialized in getting walked to first base. And despite liking baseball as a game, it’s the game of catch that feels the acme of having a well-oiled glove—just standing out front with a pal and throwing a ball back and forth like a conversation. No offense, no defense, just back and forth with a few missed catches and clumsy throws.
My lost glove was with me from third grade until college. For a long time, it was my oldest personal possession. And then it disappeared, no doubt during one of our many moves. I wish I could find it. I last remember using my old, soft, aging, original glove during college for casual softball games. I remember loving that it had my name written in my fifth-grade handwriting, back when I had handwriting. And then it disappears from experience, though not from memory. Perhaps someone found it and gave it the care it deserved? Perhaps it became the first glove of a kid in the next generation who needs a game of catch? It’s appealing to think so.’
Todd R. Nelson’s books, Cold Spell and The Land Between the Rivers, are published by Down East Books and available on Amazon. He lives in Penobscot, Maine.