Baseball Glove Is A Beginning And An Ending -- This Piece Of Worn, Folded Leather Is Like Anything You Love And Try To Hold Onto

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - The person who usually handles questions about baseball gloves, the "Glove Man" they call him, is not in when I call Rawlings Sporting Goods in St. Louis. Instead, I'm transferred to Ruth in public relations.

I try to explain what I'm looking for, without really knowing, and Ruth says, "I understand about fathers."

Twenty seconds later, she's back on the phone.

"Maybe this will help in your story," she says, and starts to read:

"A baseball glove is a beginning and an ending . . ."

You get only so many baseball gloves in a lifetime.

I have a home movie where, in short pants on an Easter, I unwrap my first baseball glove.

My second glove took me through Little League.

My third was stolen from my high-school locker.

My parents gave me my fourth glove as a present when I was 26.

I won't get another. I'm 42 now and will use the glove I have for the rest of my life.

My father only had one glove in my time with him. It's a Rawlings T-70, "the George McQuinn Claw."

McQuinn was an All-Star first baseman for the St. Louis Browns in the late '30s and early '40s. He's remembered by baseball history books as a "solid-hitting, excellent-fielding first baseman."

My dad would have preferred a Lou Gehrig model, his hero, but that year Rawlings didn't offer a glove named after the great Yankees player.

In 1943, when a five-piece maple dinette set sold for $29.85 and kids under 12 got in the local Broadway Theatre for free, the Claw was a top-of-the-line model at $15.35.

It's listed as "the hit of '41 and '42" in an ad on page 345 of the 1943 Baseball Guide and Record Book, next to a Pacific Coast League schedule that includes the notation "Buy War Bonds to Speed Victory."

In 1943, the country was in the the heart of World War II. My dad was 15, a left-handed first baseman, then and always. In baseball, you become your position if you play it long enough, and I never imagined him anywhere other than at first.

By the time I was old enough to field ground balls and throw out imaginary runners in our games of catch after dinner in the '50s, I saw my father's glove as an extension of his hand. When he put it on and we played, he took on a physical grace he didn't possess in the rest of his life.

He was 6 feet 4, a dream of a first baseman for a kid trying to learn to play shortstop. His reach allowed him to get the balls I threw too high or too wide; his skills allowed him to shuffle his feet, keeping one on the base, and short-hop the throws that were too low.

He taught me how to throw, how to hit and, during a camping vacation in Michigan in the sand dunes one summer, how to hook slide.

And when I got my first baseball glove, he taught me how to break it in.

First work oil into the glove, especially the pocket area. Take a few throws to fit your hand into the glove, put a ball in the pocket and tie the glove closed with heavy rubber bands for a few days.

Do that, and the glove becomes yours. It starts off on the rack and can belong to anyone for a price, but once you've shaped it and marinated it, it's yours.

My father's glove is more than 50 years old now. The leather is dark, some strings are missing, and you can barely make out George McQuinn's name.

My father died suddenly in December at 65 of a heart attack. He was at home in Cleveland after watching on television the Charlotte Hornets beat the Cleveland Cavaliers. Watching a good ballgame is not a bad way to go out, we joked in the fragile days after, when you find yourself crying or laughing at times you never expect.

And almost immediately, I knew there was one possession of his that I wanted - his baseball glove.

My mother looked for months, reporting regularly that she couldn't find it anywhere.

I found it last June on his workbench, sitting out in plain sight.

It wasn't there when I went home for his funeral, and although I would like to believe it just appeared, more likely my mother found it and passed it over as worn, folded leather instead of the magical glove I had described.

We who care about baseball sometimes make too much of the game, but really it is no different from anything you love and try to hold onto.

No different from a pair of dancing shoes saved in a box in the attic or a dog-eared copy of "Charlotte's Web" that your mother used to read at bedtime.

At first, we talked of framing my dad's glove. But I wanted it where I could get at it - to feel the imprint of his hand, to smell the leather, to remember.

So I keep it on a shelf next to mine. When I sit up late at night sometimes and I reach for a glove, it's his I get down. Even though it's the wrong hand for me, I put it on and it feels just right.

I put on his glove and it could be 1961 again, when we sat at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland on a Sunday afternoon and watched Roger Maris chase Babe Ruth's home-run record.

It could be any afternoon in the park. He would hit me high, high fly balls and I would chase them down, laughing, thinking I could catch every one.

Or it could be the last game I watched with him, the two of us sitting with my daughter, Jesse, two summers ago, watching the Knights play in Charlotte on a brilliant summer night.

During those times, we talked baseball, not philosophy. But if you care about the game, you learn from its rhythms.

You learn that there is always a beginning, a spring when anything's possible.

You learn that there is always an ending that never changes once it's played out.

The ball always goes between Bill Buckner's legs, and the Red Sox always lose the Series. Mitch Williams always throws the same pitch, Joe Carter always hits it into the left-field seats, and the Blue Jays always win.

We never spoke of it, but I think we both knew what was at stake.

We celebrated in life, and now I celebrate him in death.

When I sit and throw a baseball into the deep pocket of his glove, I have no regrets.

I just miss him.

"A baseball glove is a beginning and an ending," Ruth of the Rawlings public relations department is reading over the telephone. "A child's first sure step toward adulthood, an adult's final, lingering hold on youth.

"It is promise, and memory."

She skips further down on the essay on company stationery that is titled "What is a Baseball Glove?" and continues:

"Above all, a baseball glove is the union of family recreation and togetherness; a union beyond language."

She continues reading, but I don't hear the rest.