Glove Save

In so much of Jersey, hockey is king. And 30 years ago, Sean -being so much of Jersey- just wanted to catch a street puck or frozen Mylec ball in a comfortable manner no different from, well, so much of Jersey

Mizuno - MZS - F30 - c.1991

On top of being stubborn things to break in, Sean thought full goalie gloves were overkill for street games and figured a 1B mitt was more than an agile switch. Besides, he could just supplement the forearm padding with extra wrist pads and snuff the razzing to a minimum via brilliant flashes of play. Ok, so that last bit is pure speculation, but come on, folks... we're talkin’ Jersey here.

*zing

While cementing walls in front of street goals, he was also using this piece in softball games. And to be honest, a 1B baseball mitt would make for a far superior goalie glove than softball mitt. Padding and cut of the mitt generally makes catching grapefruit sized things quite a bit more of a task considering the mitt won't close as intended as well as having a much smaller target of a pocket wherein the ball won't do all it can to pop out.

It wasn't until around 10 years ago with the yellowed light of Jersey long in his rear-view, that Sean looked to put the mitt to it's proper use. He's a founding member of RVA Sandlot, an all inclusive, adult baseball league and he's been an impressively dedicated part of the group. I say that because he still plays hockey in a local Richmond league and more often than not, those games seemed to shortly follow the traditional Sunday, RVA Sandlot game slots. Which, to me, is just flatout absurd. Generally takes me a week and a half following a sandlot game to realize the charlie-horsed state of my legs isn't just the way life's going to be. And he's not in goal anymore. And skating is... hard.

All those years of unintended impact ended up busting out the web lacing. Along the way, he considered relacing it himself, but 1B mitts are a lot trickier than they appear. Much like catcher's mitts, a lot of the webbing doesn't have dedicated lace holes. One just has to know where they go in to the binding itself as well as where they're supposed to go when hidden within. Certainly not a comfortable ask for even a lot of glove relacers. In fact, there are many that refuse to touch mitts in their entirety for this and many other nuanced reasons concerning sectional approach. Start in the wrong spot and you're forced to begin all over again. A few areas should be loosely laced and tightened at the same time which is absolutely counterintuitive to field gloves and certainly can lead lacers to the mad house.

Also along the way, he misplaced the original crossbar piece of the web. I happened to have a spare tan one from an A2000-XLO that had proper basic dimensions. Holes on the undercarriage needed to be wider apart so I modified that with a Dremel and dyed the bar black with Fiebing's Pro Black Leather Dye and sealed with their resolene. Fits like a dream now. After a deep clean with Ballplayer's Balm products, I meant to just spot dye random worn areas of the glove, but, it was kind of a tough time for me and I was more than happy to be carried away in the slow, meditative process of lightly applying 2 thin coats of dye to the entire piece. Applied a very thinned out layer of resolene to entire piece as well and mitt went through three staged conditioning process with Ballplayer's Balm conditioner. Extracted old palm adhesive and added a thin layer of ovenheated glove grease by Gluvluv. 3.5/16" laces by Flatbill Baseball, skived in appropriate sections and rough side of those sealed in beeswax during the prestressing process. Web lacing was also upgraded to the proper 1/4".

I kind of adore older Mizunos. Haven't crossed many that were poorly cut, sewn or of substandard leather. Nor have I been inclined to suggest to a client that interior aspects are in dire need of attention aside from a lower end catcher's mitt that had circa 40 years of use. Just fantastic quality for generally middle of the road price points. Quite a few super popular lines of gloves out there for $100-200 more that many middling Mizunos easily rival.

So glad I could bring this piece back to form for Sean. Regardless of the Jerseyness