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Breaking In A Glove Essay

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I was five years old when I first put on a baseball glove. No, scratch that, I was five when I first played baseball. From the time I could open my eyes and look at my dad, I was wearing orange and black SF Giants gear. Once I had a handle on walking, I was learning to throw and catch. As soon I was of age, my dad signed me up for T-Ball and he gave me my first real glove. Not a cheap faux leather/polyester mix glove, a genuine, leather glove. I loved that glove, and I held onto it for years. During those years, I grew quite a bit and it was obvious my glove needed to grow too. My dad took me to the local Sport Chalet and we started to look at the different gloves. My dad is a veteran of the sport and we thought we would know which glove would …show more content…

But any I tried on felt foreign, especially if they were already broken in. My dad and uncle both agree, concluding that the gloves that were broken in had trust from other people already. Breaking in a glove is a recurring rite of passage in a player’s career. It’s during this time where he becomes acquainted with the glove, which becomes customized to the player. It is impossible to break in a glove the same way as someone else. The shape of and way we move our catching hand, how we sleep on it, what kind of practice balls we take, everything breaks down the leather and molds it to fit its player. It becomes less of an extraneous object and more of a part of him.
In this sense, a player’s glove can easily be seen as an extension of himself. When my glove tore, my confidence in myself started to tear. When I can’t trust part of me, I can’t trust the rest of me. Players don’t like borrowing gloves because they aren’t a part of them. It belongs to someone else and will for years, both in the past and future. Gloves are not simply leather stitched together to protect a hand. They are there to enhance the hand on which they are placed. But they can augment a player’s skill, if we put our trust in

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