Art Supplies
If you've been along for the ride with Ed Trask, there's a good chance you're already familiar with this glove. Be it by long tours with his bands, in the studio while painting commission pieces, or on site and scaffolds for the sake of breathtaking murals, Ed carries and stows this glove in his toolbox for perspective.
Wilson - A2000 - XL - c.1985
Not talking point-perspective here, but for when it's best to walk away from a project for a bit and clear the head. It was then a spare that was tossed to his cohort and persuaded to have a spell of catch, but now his son is growing in his own passion for the game and wanted to use this piece for himself as well. Wasn't in game shape at all. But now it be. Cheers to you, Ed. Hope your son has been enjoying the hell out of it.
And if you all weren't aware, Ed is just as insane of a Sox fan as I. Love crossing paths with him and excitedly relaying stories, speculation et al while quickly shooting each other looks like we're both nervous we've gone too far with it and one of us doesn't really actually care. This is just to say, which should also go without saying- There is no bottom of the well to my boyish fancy over Red Sox chatter. Literally none. I have to be careful because there are these things called "Life Events" that I could very easily miss due to these types of convos. Sorry not sorry though. Go Sox, Ad Aspera Per Aspera, forever and ever, amen.
The Wilson A2000 brand is no doubt an iconic series in the baseball world and the 'Dual Hinge' web is even more of a masthead for the series. Highly sought after regardless of age and condition, what makes this piece even more valuable is the fact that it's 'USA Made'. Wilson no longer makes any glove in the States, so these are extraordinarily coveted in this world of hurling bound spheres. If you ever see a Wilson emblem with 'Made In The USA', you can be sure you can pay off all of your utilities for a month or two with it. But this one is even more rare in the fact that there is no manufacturing origin on the patch. The 'Made In The USA' is actually stamped on the glove and I need to do more research to figure out it's background. There's a chance rent could be paid with it as well. Truly awesome piece and loved working on it.
Felt rather hesitant to carefully extract the blue and pink paint on the web because I'm sentimental and, Ed being a man with art in permanent residence at the VMFA..., I was crazy hesitant to screw with it. But, Ed said to give it a go, so I did, and it came out great. There's traces of it on the nylon threading, so the ghost still remains which lands as a lovely trade-off with my pesky sentimentality. Could not extract that due to fear of fraying the nylon by pushing it too far. And nobody wants frayed nylon. Nobody.
Internal felt bones of the glove were solid and needed no attending to, but the floating plastic thumb stay was very flimsy with age and needed replacing. So's I did. Manufactured one with high end HDPE plastic and replaced.
Ed's son felt the palm was a bit thin so I created a leather internal palm pad 'sewn' into the base of palm lacing.
Also extracted the 35ish year old palm adhesive that had turned into disconcerting hardened black gloop with the best oven heated adhesive available made by GluvLuv. Glove itself cleaned up beautiful with also the best on the market in both cleaner and conditioner (3X stage conditioning) with Ball Player's Balm products.
His son wanted Carolina blue laces, so I obliged with laces from Buy Fast Pitch Gloves. Bought skived (thinned) laces from them for the palm, heel close and pinky/thumb stays but this would serve as the last time I'd pay for it. I then got myself a skiver and there's basically no turning back now. In too deep. Way too deep.
This was also the first time I did a 'buried lace' on one end of the palm by opening an eye in the lace and looping another through internally instead of the standard pulling excess through and under external loops. That's what that lace and needle pic be all about, but enough robot bleeps and bloops.
Honored to work on this piece, Ed. Thank you so much for reaching out. And, hey... still have your old plastic stay. Uhmmm, mind signing that jam for me?
