Month: May 2022

Inside Baseball…Gear

For years I thought I was alone. No one else, I could imagine, spent as much time as I did analyzing players’ uniforms and gear. From double-flap helmets giving way to single flaps only once they reach the majors, to Starter jackets for pitchers on the base paths, to the mock turtleneck undershirts that were all the rage in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. I would tune-in to games, read magazines, and watch the highlights, all in an effort to take in the small details that mattered to no one…except me.

But in the past decade or so, that all changed. Like manna from heaven, websites were created and information began to flow. I learned that I was not alone. I realized that there are other weird, fanatical people like me. People who know – and want to know – if Player X was wearing a different color belt or wristbands with his picture on them; people who know – or want to know – if Player Y was using a different model glove or wearing a magnetic necklace.

The granddaddy of sports uniform minutiae is Uni Watch (www.uni-watch.com), founded in 1999 as a column in The Village Voice. Over the years the site grew in size and stature. And if ever a topic was made for the interactive experience of the web, Uni-Watch was it. Paul Lukas – the founder and writer – is a uniform expert, and writes about the most minute detail of everything from European soccer to college football, and anything and any sport in between. When I first encountered Uni-Watch and started reading Paul’s blog, I focused mostly on the baseball research, but I was just happy to know that there were hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people like me enamored with this ephemera.

For players’ equipment, there is no better authority than What Pros Wear (www.whatproswear.com). Mike Carozza started the site in 2012 because he wanted to wear Ken Griffey Jr.’s glove and couldn’t find a good source of information on “what pros wear.” So he decided to become that source; he wanted people like him to know who was wearing what, and where they could buy it. The site was made for me – or people like me…and Mike. And when I discovered it, I could not believe that such a thing existed. It was like Mike had been reading my mind and watching me scan SI’s pre-season preview for new looks, or like he saw me freeze-framing the television so I could determine if Salvador Perez was actually wearing his tried and true All-Star gear but just with the Rawlings label stitched on. You were wondering the same thing, right?

While I have been fixated on all equipment and uniform traits for years – I am a sucker for actual stirrups – my first, true, and everlasting love is batting gloves. I have been a batting glove-aholic for as long as I can remember. I could never – ahem, can never – walk into a sporting goods store without making a beeline to the baseball section. I find the aisle with the batting gloves and check out what they have on offer; and often find myself trying on the latest models (remember when stores had sample gloves on an extendable cord for just this purpose). This adoration goes back to my youth.

When I first started playing baseball, I always got a new pair before the season. At that time, Saranac was the lead manufacturer, first with their wristband-loop Velcro closure (think Dusty Baker), and then with their “Triangle” logo Velcro closure. I cherished that soft leather, and how they felt right out of the package. The batting gloves of the ‘70s and early ‘80s, which – fun fact – were the progeny of golf gloves, weren’t the most comfortable and took some time to break in. Then, around 1985, I discovered the world of Franklin. And my whole world changed.

When you opened a new pair of Franklins, the first thing I did (do) is take a whiff. Nothing compares to the musk of the Pittards leather that Franklin still uses to make their gloves. And that concept of taking time to break in? That went away the first time I donned a pair of gloves with Franklin’s unique tri-curve design. As Mike Schmidt, the first MLB endorser of Franklin would attest, Franklins were part of your hand from the get.

It is truly hard to explain my deep fascination with this company and their inimitable product (more on that below), so I won’t really try. Suffice to say that I have made note of every design change Franklin has produced over the past 35 years; I have clocked every additional colorway added to their arsenal; I have observed which players are added to their roster nearly every season (can we attribute Aaron Judge’s early-season success to his new partnership with Franklin?), and those, like my beloved Will Clark, who left the Franklin family for Easton and then to Nike (or Ken Griffey, Jr., who skipped the stop at Easton and went directly from Franklin to Nike; or Ronald Acuña, Jr., who had some of the best batting glove game in the game, but switched from Franklin to Nike this season; I could do this all day).

When I was in high school, and Franklin’s commercial colorways were not widely available (the local sporting goods store carried all black, all white, royal/white, red/white), I would use a Sharpie and a highlighter to create my own. But in 1988, long before the internet and PayPal and Zelle, I took it upon myself to call the 800-directory (extra points and a prostate exam if you remember using that) to get the phone number of Franklin Sports in Stoughton, Massachusetts. Armed with a number, I cold-called the company and asked if I could order batting gloves directly. Either out of pity, or with a prescient eye towards eventual direct-to-consumer sales, they faxed (!) me an order form. I stewed on the various options for days – a whole world had now opened to me, and seemingly, me alone. I offered this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to my teammates, but they could not be bothered. I begged my mom to front the money, as she needed to write a check that I mailed back east. A few weeks later a package appeared in our mailbox – a few pairs of never-seen-before-in-person batting gloves. Forget Christmas or Hanukkah, this was a brand new holiday!

As luck would have it, I was in Boston with my family last month when Franklin was having a warehouse sale. Their headquarters was about fifteen minutes from where were staying, so we HAD to go. We pulled off the highway, and there it was – just a series of buildings, but awe-inspiring nonetheless. We parked and headed in. Take one guess where I went first? They had hundreds of pairs of batting gloves that just needed to be seen, touched, tried on. No one in the immediate family plays baseball anymore, but my nephew does. So for him, we shopped. We also grabbed a volleyball, some hockey pucks, and a t-shirt. And that was when the connection was made.

An innocuous question about having any more shirts in my size led to a conversation about the above-referenced faxed order more than three decades ago. And that conversation introduced me to the literal Franklin family – Larry (the founder’s son) and his son Adam. Once Adam discovered my fascination and historical knowledge, he brought me to the Taj Mahal, the Sistine Chapel, the Mecca of batting gloves. My family and I were given entrée into a room at the back of the Franklin facility where all MLB players’ batting gloves are housed. In this room, from floor to ceiling, were cubbies with thousands of pairs of gloves. As a show of my insanity, I started rattling off players just by the model, design, and colorway. After nearly forty years of obsessing about batting gloves, I was welcomed into the inner-sanctum.

Adam showed us where the latest designs and improvements are made. He showed us concepts and products that even the big leaguers don’t yet know about (I can tell you what colors certain teams’ not-yet-released City Connect uniforms will be because I have seen their accessorized batting gloves), and he gave us a behind-the-scenes look at the goody box of gloves each Franklin-wearing player gets for each season’s special occasion games. As I said to my kids, this was Dad’s Disneyland.

Kids today don’t just get to mimic their favorite player’s batting stance or pitching motion. Now they can wear all of their gear and use all of their equipment. The information is there for everyone to find, fixate on, and potentially buy. Swing by your local Little League and you will see kids with Evoshield elbow protectors; stop by your local high school and see players diving back into first with running mitts. As for me, well I spend my free time playing with the Franklin batting glove customization tool (www.https://franklinsports.com/custom).

When I was a kid, I would have sooner believed that you could hang a television on the wall and watch first-run movies in your living room, or that you could store all of your albums and cassettes on a device the size of a deck of cards, or that you could do your research project on a Commodore 64, than I would have believed that you would always know exactly what every baseball player was wearing and what gear he was using, or that you could create your own custom batting gloves and have them shipped directly to your home just a few weeks later. People always talk about the good ol’ days. Forget that. With Uni-Watch, What Pros Wear, Franklin Sports, and, hell, your local Dick’s Sporting Goods, we are way better off today. Head on over, and…

PLAY BALL!!

Fenway Park: A Family Affair

A few months ago, my wife, who is a master at planning vacations, hit me with this idea: How about we meet up for Spring Break in Boston? Because she knows the animal, she had already checked the schedule and confirmed that the Red Sox would be in town. And, because the kids are growing and at different schools and thus have different Spring Break schedules, she also made sure that they all could join us in the Back Bay. Since the two youngest had never been to Boston, and because I never pass up an opportunity to go to Fenway Park, the answer was an easy one.

A click on the MLB site and then a call to the Red Sox ticket office locked in seven choice seats for a Sunday afternoon in April. Now, when I bought these tickets the players were locked out, but I felt relatively confident that the owners and players would resolve their differences with plenty of time to spare. And then they didn’t. And then Rob Manfred canceled the first week of the season. And then he canceled another week. While I wanted the impasse resolved and 162 games to be played, I clung to Manfred’s assertion that missed games would not be made up, and that the current schedule would hold. As such, I still had a few days of wiggle room; but the outcome was beginning to look bleak. Of course, a trip to Boston would still be incredible without the Red Sox. Of course, there was plenty of sights to see, history to learn, food to eat, without noshing on Fenway Franks. But, all things being equal, why would one ever do that? It wasn’t Red Sox or bust, but it was damn close.

As we all know, the owners and the players came to an uneasy accord. The first week of the season was lost, but all else remained on schedule, and our tickets for the Sunday before Patriots’ Day would and could be put to use. Suffice it to say, there was jubilation in our house when the lockout was lifted.

My son flew in from college a day early to take his third public tour of Fenway – he just cannot get enough. And on Sunday, we arrived at Jersey Street before the gates opened. Rather than waiting on line, I took the kids to Lansdowne Street and bought some souvenirs. We walked up Ipswich to Van Ness and then back to Jersey, where fans were now flowing through the gates. A brief (can it be brief?) stop at the team store netted nothing additional (yet), so we walked around the former Yawkey Way and took in the sights and sounds. I have been to nearly every ballpark, and nothing really compares to the scene outside Fenway (unfortunately, one needs a ticket to get onto Jersey Street, so this excitement is not open to the public).

The law school roommate of a dear friend of mine is an executive with the Red Sox, and he met us outside Gate A to take us on a behind-the-scenes tour of the park. We saw nooks and crannies not available to typical fans (who knew the Red Sox had their own garden where they grow fruits and vegetables for both their luxury suites and local homeless shelters?), as well as well-worn haunts like the Top of the Monster. We went to Ted William’s red seat and checked out the brand new bar and deck area behind the right field bleachers; and we watched Red Sox legend Tim Wakefield broadcast from the new NESN booth overlooking right field. In the Royal Rooters Club we saw “The Dave Roberts Base” (which is exactly what you think it is), as well as tons of memorabilia going back over a hundred years. I showed my kids pictures of what Fenway looked like when their Papa attended games there as a kid. We saw four World Series trophies and the Red Sox Hall of Fame plaques. We had spent the previous days touring Boston and learning American history; we spent Sunday morning touring Fenway Park and learning Red Sox history. Your mileage may vary on which is more important.

After our multiple dime tour, we met the rest of the family back on Jersey Street. My wife and stepdaughter were now the last two who had never been inside America’s Most Beloved Ballpark. So, it was my great pleasure to walk them up the grandstand and have them see the field and the Green Monster for the first time. It’s not the same as Billy Crystal’s description of first walking into Yankee Stadium, which he had only seen in black and white, but it is a close second. When your baseball life experience is essentially made up of Dodger Stadium, Fenway Park is otherworldly. You are just so close to the field; that wall is just so tall; and everything is just so green. And whether you are a Red Sox season ticket holder, or you are making your first visit to Fenway, the old building never disappoints.

The game got off to a slow start, but the offense picked up in the later innings. But the truth is, it did not matter. We bought snacks from the ubiquitous vendors, and held our breath when Kiké Hernández did his best Pudge Fisk impersonation, pulling one just foul down the line. Around the fourth inning my stepson said “this place is the best.” He and I don’t always see eye to eye, but on this we can agree.

And as we moved into the bottom of the sixth, I stopped my kids from leaving their seats, as I knew what was to come. The seventh inning stretch and then “Sweet Caroline” were capstones for the girls. The Red Sox win, “Dirty Water,” and “Tessie” were the capstones for me and the boys. We piled out of Fenway Park with full bellies and smiles on our faces. But we still had to make one more stop at the team store. For those who had never been before, they now knew how special the Fenway experience is; they now had to have a keepsake.

I have been to more than thirty MLB parks, and nearly all of the current ones. When people ask me my favorite, I always start with the notion that you have to take Wrigley Field and Fenway Park out of the conversation, as those two are cathedrals, they are cultural institutions, they are historic landmarks. I have spent a lot of time at Wrigley over the past few years, and don’t get to Fenway as often as I would like. But maybe that is for the best, as Fenway never stops being special; it never ceases to amaze, impress, and satisfy what my baseball-loving heart desires. As my friend Gabrielle Starr has written, “If you’ve been to Fenway before, you know what I mean. It’s that buzz of magic, of history, and anticipation. It’s the pulling of that thread that connects baseball’s past and present.”

I have pulled that thread, and been to Fenway Park with my dad, and with my sons. But this time I got to bring my wife and all my kids, and got to experience it through their eyes. They say you are only as happy as your most unhappy child. Well, after three hours in uncomfortable seats facing slightly the wrong direction, on a blustery Sunday in Boston, I was walking on sunshine.

PLAY BALL!!