There's always brand-new, latest-and-greatest, gee-whiz sporting equipment out there, but there are some items you just end up holding onto well past their presumed expiration date. It could be for reasons of sentimentality, or it could be for reasons of just not getting around to buying something new, thus creating sentimentality inadvertently.
For example, my baseball glove.
I have used the same glove to play catch with all four of my kids at whatever time they were interested in baseball or softball. My kids range in age from nine to 17 -- but my glove is way older than they are. As in, at least double the oldest one. I'm still using the Spalding lefty model with a hole to put your index finger through outside the glove, which I thought was a cool look -- at age 10, when I got it. I am 45, and it still looks pretty cool, even though the glove, as you would imagine, is running a little small.
Don Kessinger wasn't a particular hero of mine as a kid. I barely remember seeing him on TV at the end of his career with the White Sox in late 1970s. Also, as a lefty, I knew I would never play shortstop. Perhaps I had designs on being a player-manager, such as Kessinger was in 1979 (he was the manager during the infamous Disco Demolition Night. He also is the last player-manager the American League has ever had.)
Actually, I don't even remember buying this glove. Maybe my parents just got it for me on the fly because I was joining organized baseball for the first time. Maybe they got it at the late Hanson's Sporting Goods in Gladstone, Mich., along Lake Michigan in the state's Upper Peninsula, where my grandparents lived. That probably didn't happen, but I mention that because Hanson's, which sold mostly fishing gear and the chance to sit a spell and tell fish stories with the other guys in the shop, carried Rocky Colavito-signed bats into the early 1980s, so it was a go-to spot for old people baseball stuff. With merchandise moving that slowly, I guess it's easy to figure out why the store is long closed.
Anyway, I got the glove in advance of my first season in organized baseball, in North Muskegon, Mich., except I didn't use it much because my dad took my brother and me off the team because he didn't like the coach. I used it the next year, 1981, at age 11, when we won our league title, I got on the all-star team (the league was only four teams, but, hey, an all-star is an all-star), Ricky Jensen and I "entertained" our coach by frequently singing all of Styx's "Paradise Theater" record while we were on the bench, and the coach my dad disliked finished in last place while all his team looked miserable and certainly did not sing any cheesy concept albums. It turned out my dad knew what he was doing.
Alas, that was my only year of organized baseball. I used the glove a lot in neighborhood pickup games, and I would take it into gym class from time to time when we had a baseball unit. My father, who was forced as a child to become right-handed, would wear Ol' Don when playing catch with my right-handed brother and throw with his natural left. (He would wear my brother's glove when playing catch with me.) I can't say I was loyal to the glove because of that magical year of organized ball, or because I grew to appreciate Don Kessinger. I didn't play enough to warrant buying a new glove.
The Spalding Don Kessinger model -- excuse me, PROFESSIONAL Model, as it says under Kessinger's reproduced autograph -- stayed with me because it even if it didn't fit my right hand, it seem to fit the bill. I used Ol' Don to play catch with my oldest son when he was in organized baseball from ages 7 to 9. I used it with my oldest daughter when she was in organized softball -- including a few years of me coaching her teams -- when she was ages 8 to 13. I used it to play catch with my youngest son, when I coached his teams, at ages 7 to 8. And I use it now to play catch with my youngest daughter, who at age 9 is in her fourth year of organized softball.
For a while, I didn't use the glove to play catch with my youngest daughter. I somehow lost ol' Don, and for about one-and-a-half years I had no idea where it went. As my youngest daughter threw harder, going without a glove was not an option anymore, as my sore, red hands told me. It looked like it was time for a new glove.
Then earlier this spring, as I unpacked a suitcase from a business trip, there was a bulge in an outer pocket that remained after I unpacked everything. It was ol' Don, packed for a family vacation in a suitcase we clearly hadn't used for some time. It wasn't exactly swelling violins and a tearful reunions, but it was nice to see the old ballglove again. And not because my hands wouldn't turn red anymore. Ol' Don has been my baseball and softball life.
As corny as it sounds -- trust me, I know it does, because I'm not a big fan of the movie "Field of Dreams" -- the glove is a connection between me as a kid, and my own kids. My old footballs, basketballs and even baseball bats signed by players a little more modern than Rocky Colavito are long used up, but Ol' Don lives on. And on. And on. Maybe Ol' Don will someday catch balls thrown by my grandchildren.
