Gloves

I am thinking about purchasing those clips that nursery school children use to clip their mittens to their winter jackets. So far this winter, I have lost three left gloves (what's the deeper meaning of that?). I am now reduced to wearing those $1.00 one-size-fits-all gloves that MHW buys at the beginning of each winter in anticipation of the kids losing their regular gloves.

I am also thinking about my other glove, my softball glove. How strange that while I lose an average of two or three pairs of gloves per winter, I have managed to hold on to my softball glove for the past 24 years.

(In fact, I have had only two gloves in the past 35 years. I lost my previous glove when I was an associate at a Wall Street law firm. I played second base for the firm team (I should have been playing third base but that position was occupied by a rather rotund and talentless partner who couldn't move more than one foot in either direction; but owing to his status as partner and mine as lowly first-year associate, he ended up at the hot corner). One game I singled and tried to stretch it into a double, slid in to second and broke my left wrist. I took a cab to St. Vincent's Hospital where I waited seven hours until they finished taking care of all the drug addicts and shotgun victims. Unfortunately, I forgot my mitt on the field and never saw it again).

I love my glove. It is small, not like today's massive gloves, a real infielder's mitt. I paid $100, a fortune, 24 years ago. Even though I rarely play anymore (Years ago I played in the Young Israel league but I got fed up with all the arguing and whining and started to ride my bike instead) I oil my mitt every season. I even sent it to the Mitt Mender when it started to fall apart a number of years ago (They did a fabulous job).

I am looking forward to picking up my beloved mitt and tossing the ball around with my kids as soon as the weather warms up.