REMEMBERING WHEN: The magic baseball glove

By Keith Schell

One day on the school playground in grade five, the boys were about to experience a monumental shift in athletic priorities. We had always played sandlot soccer at recess for as long as I could remember, but when spring rolled around that year, the coolest guys in our class decided they were tired of soccer and wanted to try something else.

And so, the sport we transitioned to that spring was baseball.

The problem was, I didn't want to play baseball. I just wanted to play soccer because I was good at it, and I didn't want to lose my exalted place as the third kid always picked for every game. But the rest of the kids decided they wanted to play baseball, so what choice did I have? I didn't like baseball. I wasn't any good at baseball. And on top of that, I didn't even own a baseball glove! I always had to borrow one from one of the kids who were going up to bat. I couldn't catch, either, which meant I was usually one of the last kids picked for teams.

When I searched around my house for a baseball glove, I found a few old ones in the closet from when Dad was a kid. He told me to pick one of those, but they were hardball gloves with small pockets and fat fingers—old-timey mitts that couldn't properly catch a softball, which was all we ever used on the playground.

One day, I was one of the first kids out for recess that morning. I spotted something lying on the ground at the far end of the playground near the fence and went to investigate. Lo and behold, it was an old baseball glove! Since I didn't have one of my own, I decided to try it out. Black, beaten up, and more of a well-worn old sock than anything else, it was held together with shoelaces but had a great pocket and was easy to squeeze shut. Looking around and seeing nobody, I decided to claim the glove for myself and headed off to play baseball with the rest of the kids.

After the teams were picked and I was chosen third last as usual, I went out to the field where nobody ever hit and prayed that no ball would ever come my way. And, of course, a line shot came out to me immediately.

OH, NO! I ran toward it, stuck the glove in front of the ball, and hoped for the best. The ball went right into the glove, and the glove automatically snapped shut. I made a great catch! Everyone on the diamond cheered at the surprising play. A little while later, another ball was hit out to me. Again, the glove snapped shut, and I made another great catch. All that day, every ball that came to me at recess I caught. That glove performed like magic. And because of that old sock of a glove, my confidence soared. That magic glove could catch anything!

Every day that week, I was the master of my position. Everything hit out to me was caught effortlessly, thanks to the magic baseball glove. My self-confidence and my status on the playground soared. I was now a good baseball player, and it was all because of that glove. I wanted to keep it forever.

But I couldn't just take it outright; it wasn't mine. So, I did the next best thing I could think of: I found a secret hiding place on the playground where nobody could see it and hid the glove there at the end of every recess, so I could go back and retrieve it at the beginning of the next one.

My plan worked beautifully for a while. I would play great all recess, then hide the glove before going back inside.

But one day at the beginning of recess, just before our baseball game started, I ran to my secret spot to retrieve the magic baseball glove.

It wasn't there.

Someone had found the glove and taken it from its hiding place. Perhaps the original owner had reclaimed it. Perhaps the custodian had found it and thrown it away. We will never know.

Without the magic baseball glove, everything slowly reverted back to the way things were before I had it. But eventually, my cousin gave me his old baseball glove for keeps when he lost interest in baseball, and with that glove I finally became a decent baseball player. But I never truly recaptured the fielding wizardry I'd had before that with the magic baseball glove.

Looking back, finding that old glove was probably one of the best athletic things that could have happened to me at that age. When a child begins to play a sport, they need to be set up for personal success in their formative years in order to develop confidence. In those early years, personal development is more important than winning and losing. Opportunities to win will come later. A proper foundation is crucial, and part of that foundation is having the right equipment. In my case, that old sock of a glove—one that could almost catch a ball by itself—was essential in building my confidence. It helped me realize that I could catch a ball if I had the right glove on my hand. A brand new baseball glove that's too stiff to squeeze shut can destroy a child's athletic self-esteem. When a ball clunks off that glove and falls to the ground, the child blames themselves, not the equipment. They don't know any better.

In the years since, I sometimes think about that baseball glove. Maybe it wasn't magic at all—maybe it was just the right tool arriving at just the right time. Sometimes I like to imagine that the glove found me on purpose, just long enough to show a kid lacking confidence that he was capable of more than he believed.

And even though it disappeared just as suddenly as it arrived, the magic baseball glove helped to shape the respectable athlete—and the person—I eventually became.