Glove of the Series: Long Beach Coast

Glove of the Series: Rawlings PROXPG3-3

by Kyle Robinson

Pioneer League addition with sky-high aspirations Long Beach comes to Raimondi starting today, and as these two clubs start building a brand-new rivalry, this glove seemed perfect for the series: new is great, but tradition matters.

Heart of the Hide leather. Basket web. Wingtip back. Flex-O-Matic palm. At first glance, this thing looks like it should already have a few decades of stories attached to it.

And in a way, it does.

The XPG3 lineage traces back to Rawlings models from the 1960s, including Brooks Robinson-era models that helped define what classic infield leather was supposed to feel like. Long before every new release needed louder colors, bigger logos, or some kind of hype campaign, these were baseball gloves built to survive dirt, sweat, oil, sun, and years of repairs.

That history is probably part of why the PROXPG3-3 feels so different now.

Rawlings could have modernized everything about it. Instead, they kept the old character intact: the wingtip design, the oversized piping, the basket web, even the old Flex-O-Matic palm stamp that feels pulled straight out of another era of baseball.

It feels less like a retro gimmick and more like a glove made by people who understood why players held onto old Rawlings gloves for so long in the first place.

For me, growing up, that big cursive “R” inside the circle on the thumb always reminded me of the way my mom signed our last name: Robinson.

I wanted everything I owned to have the Rawlings patch on it — batting gloves, sweatbands, belts, pants, catcher’s gear, all of it.

So finding out later that fellow Robinsons had already left their fingerprints all over baseball only made the connection stronger. Jackie. Frank. Brooks. Different stories, different legacies, but names that always seem to find their way into conversations about the game.

So even before I knew glove history, collector culture, or any of the rest of it, Rawlings already felt familiar to me. I’ve got no relation to Brooks, or any of the other aforementioned gentlemen, at least none that I know of. But there’s still time, I suppose.

The game looked good back then.

This glove still does.

All due respect to the new Long Beach Coast. The B’s aren’t all that old either. But our Ballers already have a history to be proud of.

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