It was one of the greatest smells to ever grace a 10-year-old’s nostrils. It also defined the term “sight to behold.”

There it was; all laid out on in front of me. A kid baseball player’s dream.

For me, this scene played out at Harbuck’s or Crawford Womack’s. For you, it might have been another place at another time.

But we all come back to that same core memory – getting a new baseball glove.

For a kid, getting a glove is like getting a new friend. There’s a certain knowledge that if you take care of it, it will take care of you. You’d hang onto it well beyond its life expectancy because you just couldn’t bring yourself to move on to another.

It just didn’t seem right to treat a friend like that.

One of the great things about a baseball glove is that it is completely unlike almost any other purchase you make. When Dad bought you a bicycle, you’d hop on and away you’d go. Instant satisfaction. Nothing to it.

Not a baseball glove. There’s a process involved that can’t be taken for granted. From the moment you tried it on until the day the strings started coming out, you had to care for it like it was a newborn because in many ways, it was.

Crawford Womack had a sporting goods store on Southern Avenue and I got (almost) every glove I had from there until he sold the business in 1973. The memory of walking in the door and seeing what seemed like miles and miles of baseball gloves is something that will always live with me.

Rawlings, Wilson and Spalding brands all basically saying “pick me” as I tried to adsorb the aura that lay before me. Mr. Womack, who I am convinced was 137 years at the time, would be in there firing up a stogie and ready to offer a recommendation if needed. But he knew the deal; you don’t just grab a glove and take it to the checkout counter.

They all had subtle differences – color, texture, size – but one glorious similarity. They all smelled like heaven.

For a kid, you had to look inside the glove to find what might have been the real deal-breaker: Who’s autographed it? You’d much rather have a Brooks Robinson glove than a Bobby Shantz glove. I had both during my glove-buying childhood. (Quick note: Bobby Shantz, who I would never have heard of had I not had his glove model, is still alive at 100 years old and is the last surviving major leaguer who played in the 1940s.)

But the life of a glove truly begins when you get home. Buy a set of golf clubs and you can hit them in the parking lot. Buy a basketball and you can dribble it on the way out the door.

To get a glove broken in and ready for gametime, you need equal amounts of time and TLC. And just about every glove-owning family has a secret recipe that is as proven as grandma’s six-cheese casserole.

There is the run-over-it-with-the-family-car method, which we never tried (for fear of tire tracks).

Others would tightly wrap it with tape around the outside and leave it alone for a few days.

I’ve heard others who would dunk it in water to help break it in, though I think that’s pure blasphemy.

At the Marshall household, we subscribed to the put-it-under-the-mattress method but ALWAYS with a ball inside of it. Sure, we’d wake up with a sore back, but hey, no pain no (leather) gain. A few days under the ol’ Sealy and we were well on the way.

But the job wasn’t done until the glove could completely close on its own and lay down flat though, with just the right amount of curvature; the exact opposite of the way it looked when it left Womack’s.

Or S&H Green Stamps.

I loved my mother like you wouldn’t believe – the woman taught herself to keep score at games – buy Mom took an E during my youth baseball days when she saved up enough Green Stamps (kids, ask your grandparents) to get me a new glove.

Let’s just say that the selection at the Green Stamps redemption center wasn’t quite as voluminous as the selection at Crawford Womack’s. But when I came home one day after school, I had a new baseball glove.

A Bobby Shantz model baseball glove. 

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com