Glove of the Series: Rawlings Heart of the Hide Pro205-6
The Roadsters return to Raimondi, and it’s time for the Gamer
by Kyle Robinson
This one isn’t particularly mysterious. No forgotten patent to uncover, Japanese catalog to translate, nor some wacky transparent shell exposing its construction, and definitely no four tiny dots sending me down a rabbit hole trying to figure out when it was built.
It’s a Rawlings Heart of the Hide. Camel. Tan laces. H-Web. 11¾ inches. 200 pattern. There isn’t much here requiring an archaeological expedition, but if somebody called me tomorrow and said, “We’re playing ball. Bring a glove.” This is the one I’d grab.
Before this glove, there was an R2G, and that glove deserves some respect. It wasn’t some mistake I made before becoming enlightened about baseball gloves, it wasn’t a cheap thing I couldn’t wait to replace. It was available, playable, I needed a glove, it did exactly what I needed a glove to do. It let me play baseball.
Things changed and necessity became preference. I’d played enough again to know what I liked and, maybe most importantly, I was finally in a position to buy myself something genuinely nice. The first top-end baseball glove I’d ever bought entirely for myself. I think there might be a small rite of passage buried in that. Most of us don’t choose our first baseball glove; it's usually chosen for us by someone else—a parent, a glove obsessed individual such as myself somewhere in your orbit. Maybe a coach, older sibling’s hand-me-down, Little League equipment bag, wherever. Eventually, if you keep playing long enough, there comes a moment when you get to choose, and the question changes from:
What glove can I use into what glove do I want?
I wanted this one, and unlike the Lance Parrish mitt from earlier this week, I did what the tags assumed somebody eventually would and cut them off as soon as the mail dropped it at the front porch. I started working the hinges, curling the fingers, figuring out where I wanted it to close, then I played baseball with it.
Collectors can tell you about leather, argue about steerhide, kip and Horween until everybody involved regrets opening the internet. They can compare patterns, webs, welting, thumb loops and wrist openings. But there’s another category that doesn’t appear in any catalog, the glove you trust. That is, you just reach for it.
We’re playing baseball? I know which one I’m grabbing. Maybe that’s because this glove has information the others don’t. The pocket wasn’t designed for me at the factory, I made it mine afterward. Breaking in a glove boils down to teaching a tool what you’re going to ask it to do, and do that enough times, and eventually you stop asking and it just happens.
There are similarities between baseball teams and glove collections. Everything is possibility it seems: look at a glove the way you look at a roster and imagine what it might become. Potential is easy to love because potential hasn’t had the opportunity to disappoint you yet.
A collection is full of questions. A gamer is full of answers.
This season has felt a little like that for the Oakland Ballers.
For months, they’ve been trying to figure out exactly what they have, and some solutions were deliberate while others born entirely from necessity. That’s baseball; nobody builds a roster in April or May and simply watches the same machine operate unchanged through August and September. The possibilities remain open, until eventually they don’t. Eventually you stop wondering what something might be and start paying attention to what it actually is.
A little more than a week ago, Modesto gave Oakland one of the clearest assessments imaginable. The Roadsters didn’t expose some hidden flaw, but they beat the brakes off of the Ballers. Then Oakland got on a bus and went to Long Beach, and nearly swept one of the league’s best teams. Came back north and got another crack at the Roadsters out in Modesto. Just another chance to do something with what they’d learned—information only matters if it changes behavior.
This time, Oakland took the series. Two out of three. In no way does that erase what happened at Raimondi, those games still happened. Just like every crease, scar and imperfection remains part of a gamer. The difference is that gamers aren’t defined by individual moments, they’re defined by accumulation, repetition, evidence.
Identity sounds like something a team chooses, but most of the time, it isn’t. A team becomes what it repeatedly demonstrates. The same way a glove becomes what you repeatedly ask it to do, those gloves you invest the time in beyond just buying. The collection piece phase is ending, the gamer phase is beginning.
The glove I have today is useful partly because of everything that already happened to it; you don’t get experience without allowing something to become imperfect.
The Ballers are getting close to that portion of the season where the path isn’t generous, winning games matters, and winning series matters more. They’re bringing the fight back to Raimondi this weekend and the assignment is the same.
Win. Take two of three. Then do it again. Stack them. There isn’t enough season left to spend much time admiring potential.
Potential is for collections. September belongs to gamers.
This one isn’t necessarily the glove I’d choose if somebody handed me a Rawlings catalog today and told me I could have whatever I wanted, as much as I would love for that to happen. That’s almost irrelevant, because I’m not starting from zero, and that’s what makes it valuable—it carries all the decisions I’ve already made; good ones, questionable ones, the adjustments, the repetitions, the games.
Earlier this week, I wrote about a mitt that somehow survived for more than four decades without anybody doing that, the tags stayed on, the pocket stayed untouched, the potential remained perfectly preserved. It’s a remarkable artifact, at least to me, I’m glad somebody left it alone. But I’m also glad I didn’t do that to this one.
I don’t remember the exact moment this glove became my gamer, but a couple weeks ago when a ball was hit to me in the air at second base (my literal nightmare) and I snagged it, without too much effort, I knew we’d gotten there.
Fifty throws became a hundred, catch became ground balls, ground balls became scrimmages, and fall ball. Eventually the decision disappeared completely. someone asks if I’m playing, I grab the glove. That’s it.
The tags came off this glove a long time ago. There are plenty of others in the house now. But when it’s time to actually play? I'm grabbing this one.
Kyle Robinson is a transplanted Texan with a lifelong passion for the game of baseball. Residing in Oakland with his wife Randi, their daughter India, and a menagerie of pets. When he’s not slyly convincing his wife to name their pets after legendary baseball broadcasters (e.g. our corgi Milo Hamilton Robinson) he is probably balancing parenthood with trying to cram in as much baseball as possible. Whether it’s keeping the dream alive as a weekend warrior behind the dish, or on the sideline as a coach, volunteering, rest assured he has baseball on the brain. Find him on Instagram: @krob452
