A GOOD GLOVE HOLDS ON TO0 THE INTANGIBLES

I've arrived at an awkward age. I'm too old to buy a new baseball glove and too young to be without one.

In life's grand scheme, this might seem a trifling matter. Admittedly, too, it's a "guy thing." Few things serve as security blankets for grown men like power tools and old baseball gloves. This says something about the fragile nature of manhood in a post-feminist world.

I concede this as ridiculous. Still, my will contains a sentence (which I probably paid an attorney several dollars to compose) that speaks to the disposition of my baseball glove.

This irrational clinging to a lingering token of my boyhood put me in something of a funk recently when I discovered my baseball glove, like its owner, was deteriorating from advancing years.

It was a mess. A strap that laced through the fingers and held them to the pocket had broken, making the activity of catching a ball an ~unwanted adventure. A strap holding the heel together also gave way to age, revealing some of the padding. Inside the palm, the leather was breaking up.

From this woeful state came my dilemma. What maturity I could muster told me that a mortgage-paying, child-raising, allegedly responsible adult male shouldn't spend $50 or so to replace a baseball glove that gets occasional use.

On the other hand ... well, I don't live the rest of my days without a baseball glove I can depend on. You never know when a fly ball will come your way.

That was the way you were coached to feel as a young outfielder, all eager and relatively fleet. You learned no moments as anxious and exhilarating as trotting beyond the infielders to a tract of ground entrusted to your defense by teammates.

These were great times: The grass was freshly mowed and your cleats kicked up its clippings and fragrance; you threw long and languid warm-up tosses to a teammate who would cover your back if you went for a sinking liner; your parents were in the stands; each batted ball lifted in your direction sparked the senses.

Unlike most sports, where tennis courts or football fields are standard to some degree, baseball is a game of weird angles and unusual surroundings. The small-town outfielder accepted this discipline like learning to hit a cutoff man.

At VFW Stadium in Sikeston, a terrific ball field included a quirky grove of pine trees that were in play in deep center field. On the unusual occasions when a batter slammed a pitch to that part of the park, you'd see the centerfielder disappear into the grove, hands and knees scrambling, to grope among the pines as the hitter sprinted from base to base.

Slightly more hazardous was a field in East Prairie that featured its outfield light poles inside the fence. An aggressive and unwatchful outfielder could as easily catch a guy wire across the chest as a long fly ball.

Just as you look back now with humor through the eyes of an adult, you viewed things then as a teen-ager with what you thought was serious business to attend to. It turned out the serious part came later: You didn't know at the time the second baseman would become a minister, the third baseman would become an underwriter, the catcher would become a dentist ... they were just guys on the team.

The link that remains is the glove, which you never lost track of in the dugout, which protected you from hard-hit balls, which identified you. (After being stranded on base, a teammate would stand on the basepath and call for his glove: "I'm that Wilson, end of the bench.")

This is why baseball holds a special place in many men's lives. This is why you fret over decay of a 25-year-old glove.

Thus, I bought a length of strap and went to work, tying new leather to old and lacing the separated material of my glove into something resembling its original form. Without leather-working tools, I improvised with scissors and persistence, and finally square-knotted my way to a decent restoration.

I put it on my left hand, slapped it a good whack in the pocket and felt better about life. The things that make boys happy.

Life's curious cycle grinds on. I found myself in a store lately buying a glove for my daughter, who launched a T-ball career this summer. We came home with one that is the same brand as my own, with the same corny trademark features (the "Edge-U-Cated Heel," the "Deep Well" pocket, the "Flex-O-Matic Palm") and the same company cachet ("The Finest In The Field") used when I was a boy.

Where my glove was autographed by Brooks Robinson (last seen on television as an elder statesman for recliners), hers is signed by Cal Ripken Jr.; the Newton family has a soft spot for Oriole infielders.

The glove I restored boasts proudly its manufacture by Rawlings USA. My daughter's new glove carries a small embossed stamp that reads, "Made In The Philippines."

OK, so times and trade imbalance caught up with my memories.

Maybe my daughter will carry kind thoughts of her softball days into adulthood. A good glove helps, not only stopping balls moving at unreasonable velocities, but in holding on to less tangible things, too.