Luke and the glove

By Ed Piper, Jr.

My grandson Luke got a baseball glove from his father, so yesterday we were hitting the ball off his plastic tee and using the glove to catch the ball.

Which brings redemption to my long-ago sadness over having my brand-new Rawlings Gold Glove, given to me for my 15th birthday, stolen during a high school playoff game.

It was the glove of my dreams. My brother Steve and I played baseball throughout our childhoods, he beginning at age 7, me at age 8, and through high school.

Camarillo High, our alma mater, was playing a home CIF playoff game against visiting Santa Fe Springs. There were what we called then some "hood"-looking kids, rough kids, who came to our fairly small, protected community from the greater L.A. area for the game.

As we weren't unused to doing, after my own junior varsity baseball practice, I went outside school, placed my school binder with glove on top of it on the hood of our family car, which my older brother was allowed to drive to school that day. I went back in the fence to watch the rest of the playoff game.

My brother wasn't playing, because he was the back-up first baseman behind Randy Elliott, the local superstar who batted .300 on home runs alone. Randy was soon was to be the Padres' number-one pick in the amateur draft. He didn't pan out, though he did remain in the majors with the A's for a few years.

Anyway, when the game was over and some of the "hoods" had been cruising around outside the school, my Gold Glove, which I had only had a few weeks, was gone. I was heart-broken.

Of course, looking at it from this vantage point, the prevention looks pretty obvious: why was I leaving my brand new glove, which probably cost $40 or so, a ton of money at that time, outside in an open place like that, considering all the activity that was going on?

I don't remember much discussion in the family about the stolen glove. I knew as soon as it was gone that it wasn't coming back and that my parents weren't going to fork over the large amount of money required to get a new Rawlings glove.

So I moved on. What I got was a Wilson glove, much less spectacular in value and style, through Blue Chip stamps. I am not kidding. My mom was a collector of the stamps, and we found a glove in the Blue Chip catalog, or however you picked items for Blue Chip stamps (given with your purchase at the grocery store).

That's what I used. The next season, I was moved from shortstop to first base, so I was loaned a first baseman's glove by the school, and I now took my brother's place on the bench as he moved into the lineup as the starting first baseman his senior year--my junior year. I didn't need the Wilson fielder's glove.

I remember giving my Wilson glove, obtained with Blue Chip stamps, to Dave Rogers after I quit
American Legion baseball to pursue my dreams in basketball.

My grandson Luke doesn't know any of this.