In 1991, I helped with an exhibit at the Brown County Historical Society.\u00a0 We called it, \u201cBaseball and Brown County, A Glove Affair.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s a little cheesy.\u00a0 But I still like it.<\/p>\n
The exhibit was a look at the sweep of baseball through the years from New Ulm to Comfrey.\u00a0 We identified the first known game in Brown County between the Golden Gate Groundhogs and the Iberia Shoo Flies in 1870.\u00a0 Those early villages were settled by Irish and English who came from the East where baseball exploded in popularity after the Civil War.\u00a0 They quickly passed it to their German immigrant neighbors.<\/p>\n
For 150 years baseball has been played in pastures and town lots here.\u00a0 It was played in ballparks that remain today and ballfields that are memories, some forgotten.\u00a0 A peak in popularity came after World War II when thousands watched the semi-pro Western Minny League in New Ulm, Sleepy Eye, and Springfield.<\/p>\n
I remember New Ulm\u2019s Otis Loose telling me if you drove to a rise west of New Ulm on a summer night, you could see the glow from any of five ballparks with lights.\u00a0 It is a magical image that says better than words what baseball means here.\u00a0 Leavenworth and Essig have since made that seven.<\/p>\n
\u201cA Glove Affair\u201d could have been Bat Affair or a Ball Affair except for the word play.\u00a0 I thought of that the other day when I came across my old glove.\u00a0 I slipped it on my left hand, careful some critter hadn\u2019t taken up residence.<\/p>\n
Through years of baseball and softball, I had multiple gloves. Some wore out; some were replaced by a cooler model, one got lost at the Metrodome. \u00a0Every glove is unique.\u00a0 Quality varies.\u00a0 You choose that by how many dollars you spend or get your parents to spend.\u00a0 Age takes its toll.\u00a0 The number of balls smacked into the pocket, the times it gets tossed on a dugout floor or infield dirt, those give it character.\u00a0 Scuffs and darkened padding are to a glove like wrinkles to a face.<\/p>\n
At times I was better or worse at caring for my leather companion.\u00a0 Better was oiling it after a game with a ball rubber-banded in the pocket.\u00a0 Worse was letting it lay out in the yard under a night rain.\u00a0 In the end, it\u2019s like us; we\u2019ve only got so many games.<\/p>\n
It is not exaggerating to say a ball player knows their glove intimately.\u00a0 It\u2019s an extension of self.\u00a0 Glove on, crouched slightly, ready in the field, that formed-and-stitched leather becomes your hand.\u00a0 The way a gifted fielder takes the ball off the ground or out of the air is beautiful to watch.\u00a0 You know how amazing it is by having tried hundreds of times yourself.<\/p>\n
All sports have their tools and the tactile sensations that come from using them in practice and competition.\u00a0 If a game was something you played and dreamt about as a kid, those sensations are imprinted in the part of your mind where warm and comfortable memories are stored.<\/p>\n
My son played hockey and soccer, games I didn\u2019t know.\u00a0 I was around those enough to sense the attraction of working a hockey stick or kicking about a soccer ball.\u00a0 I could see how a boy or girl could grow up feeling deep connection with those.\u00a0 When we visited Spain, it was joyful to watch children maneuver and manipulate a ball with their feet, almost like a dance, everywhere there were kids and open space.\u00a0 There was a good chance some of those kids were Lionel Messi in their minds, the Barcelona star.\u00a0 Same as I was Zoilo Versailles with my glove and a ball at that age.<\/p>\n
I learned to appreciate those games, but baseball is where my memories are pooled.\u00a0 It\u2019s not just the glove.\u00a0 To a now or former ballplayer, it is impossible to pick up a bat and not take hold of it as if you were stepping from the on-deck circle to the batter\u2019s box.\u00a0 If you\u2019re a righthander, right hand on top, left hand feeling for the knob.\u00a0 I grew up with wood, so label instinctively points up.\u00a0 Then it\u2019s tapping an imaginary home plate, extending the bat in front of you, before cocking it over your shoulder.\u00a0 Ready.\u00a0 C\u2019mon pitcher.<\/p>\n
Alone in your garage or the middle of your farmyard, you raise the bat and drive an outside pitch to the right field wall or turn sharply on a pitch in, pulling it down the line.\u00a0 Since it\u2019s imagination, the ball might as well explode off your bat, making pure and perfect contact.<\/p>\n
There are other sensations unique to positions in the field.\u00a0 I caught a little but can\u2019t say putting on those pads is a comforting memory.\u00a0 Those were akin to putting on football pads for me, more burden than pleasant recollection.\u00a0 But if you spent years crouched behind home plate, you probably are fond of that chest protector.<\/p>\n
I played some first base.\u00a0 To this day, if I step on a ballfield, I like to go to first base and set my heels against the bag, ready to shift right or left depending where the infielder makes the throw.\u00a0 Sometimes on the farm, I put my heels up against a stone or board and go right or left with an imaginary glove to take an imaginary throw from an imaginary infielder.\u00a0 I do these things when Pam is gone.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the ball itself.\u00a0 There is nothing that fits so well in a hand.\u00a0 Even a non-pitcher like me fooled around enough with the pitchers to know how to hold a curveball, forkball, screwball, knuckleball.\u00a0 The ball rolls around in my hand and my fingers take various positions guided by the seams.<\/p>\n
A baseball has a smell that is part of the memory flood when you pick it up, a musty, hide-like smell.\u00a0 I have read that our sense of smell is the strongest placeholder of memories.\u00a0 Baseball has plenty of those: dewy grass of a morning practice, a dugout blend of seeds and bubblegum, the dust that lingers after sliding into a base.<\/p>\n
There is a quote by pitcher and writer Jim Bouton about holding a ball.\u00a0 I suspect a lot of tough old ballplayers got a clench in their throat the first time they heard it.\u00a0 \u201cA ballplayer spends a good piece of his life gripping a baseball, and in the end, it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
I tossed some pitches to my four-year old grandson last weekend.\u00a0 Who knows if baseball will be what he gravitates toward?\u00a0 Levi has a million more options than a farm kid growing up sixty years ago.\u00a0 We\u2019ll put a ball in Levi\u2019s hand.\u00a0 We\u2019ll have to see if it holds on to him.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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In 1991, I helped with an exhibit at the Brown County Historical Society.\u00a0 We called it, \u201cBaseball and Brown County, A Glove Affair.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s a little cheesy.\u00a0 But I still like it. The exhibit was a look at the sweep of baseball through the years from New Ulm to Comfrey.\u00a0 We identified the first known …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 10:13:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119576,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119575\/revisions\/119576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}