Is there any day as exciting as demo day. Its almost like Christmas morning for baseball people. Swinging new bats is nice but for me the exciting part is the new gloves. The feel of a new glove is something special. Putting a brand new glove on your hand and popping your throwing hand into the pocket. Diving face first into the mitt and taking in the smell of that brand new leather. Putting that one down and picking up another one and doing it again, then again! Today's stock baseball gloves are so nice. All the big glove companies have beautiful gloves. Gloves come in solid colors, two-tones and a variety of other options. If that isn't good enough for you some of these companies, for a premium, will allow you to customize your own glove. I think I was born way too early. The only gloves I ever had were what ever was on the shelf at the local sporting goods shop.
I am not complaining about my glove. Dad bought an A2000 for me when I was about 11 years old. I loved that glove. A2000 - L, might have been the best glove of its time. I sure wore that sucker out. I used it for the rest of my little league career and for the first two years of Babe Ruth baseball. I used it so much that the leather on the inside of the glove started to fall apart. The palm was so thin it was like trying to catch a ball with a hand towel. My freshman year in high school dad bought me an A2000 - XL. Another great glove that provided me with years of service lasting through my freshman year of college. During the fall of my sophomore year of college, my coach, Doug Jennett must have seen my rag of a glove and took pity on me. About mid way through that fall semester Coach Jennett gave me a brand new glove. This would be the last glove of my playing career. A2000 - XXL, the perfect tool for an outfielder. That glove helped me to catch a lot of fly balls over the last few years of my playing career. I hope that my dad and Coach Jennett knew how much I appreciated those gloves. I do know that I played a several hundred baseball games with them. If you think about it maybe we should all take 5 minutes and thank the people that paved the way for us to play ball. I think I will do that right now.
Coach Bale
