| FA C U LT Y
VOICE
The Gloves of Summer
BY | DAVID JENEMANN
What is the first sensation that comes to mind when you think about a baseball glove? Maybe it’s the smell. There is something utterly distinctive about the smell of a baseball glove. Like “new car smell,” or “Chinatown,” a baseball glove is an amalgam of aromas combining together to produce a scent unlike anything else. Even though individual expressions of the form may vary (a Subaru smells different than a Porsche and Montreal’s Chinatown is distinct from New York’s or San Francisco’s), there is nevertheless no mistaking the smell of a new car for the smell of Chinatown. It is the same for a baseball glove. New, there is the odor of leather, and coupled with
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that is the smell of the tanning process that gives the leather its character. Each color of dye imparts a slightly different scent character. A black glove, a walnut glove, and a red glove will all smell slightly different. Perhaps, at the wrist strap there is the funk of lamb’s wool and the slightly acrid, caustic tinge of new stitching in the embroidered label. The lettering, burned into the leather, imparts more notes. But the smell of a new glove is like an opening movement when compared to the symphony of a broken-in and well-used glove—a sonnet compared to an epic poem. A well-worn glove still holds the memory of the new glove as an undertone, but it also holds the scent of infield clay and outfield
grass. Depending on how it is broken in, an older glove will smell of glove oil, or neatsfoot oil, or Vaseline. Or maybe, alongside the grass and the dust, it will smell just slightly of shaving cream, of lanolin, of a parent or grandparent, who smelled something like that glove when they taught you to shave or when they sat close by your side and told you the mysteries of the game like they were revealing to you the meaning of the world. And lastly, a well-worn glove will smell like sweat and salt. The lambswool and the padding and the leather itself will absorb the smell of the wearer, of the days in the sun spent playing and the nights on the couch spent pounding the pocket into just the right shape. SALLY MCCAY