BASEBALL MITT

I remember my first new baseball glove.
I’d been through all of the hand-me-downs
from cousins, uncles, friends, even from affluent uptown acquaintances.
Somehow that parade of gloves proved similar to
the half dozen exhausted and rusted automobiles handed me a decade later.
They appeared effective and efficient for a month or so, then totally broke down.
And so it was with the gifts of tired, tattered, torn, and discarded baseball mitts.
Then my big brother drove me to a local sporting goods store, Davaga.
Whatever became of them?
Probably occupying the same department store limbo as E.J. Korvette and S. Klein stores.
He said, card-playing style, “Pick a mitt!!! Any mitt!!!”
I snatched the box holding my choice right off the shelf.
The Stan Musial, PMN model.
That glove matched up to any I’d seen.
Just as my high-back sneakers sporting the circle K
possessed the magical elixir of flight,
my PMN Glove would transform me into a budding Stan Musial.
Kids in my Brooklyn days didn’t just buy a glove, then play.
There was a quasi-religious ritual attached to “breaking-in” the mitt.
One preened it.
One punched it, Marciano style.
One drenched it in Neatsfoot Oil.
One squeezed a ball into its pocket, tied it tighter than a tourniquet and strangled it with rope.
Finally, one placed it under a mattress and slept on it.
All this preparation designed to develop the deep pocket, so one would never drop a baseball.
You see, the glove was an admission ticket to the diamond dream
And, even when that dream dissolved to stardust,
it was all still worth the ritual.