The Last American Baseball-Glove Maker Refuses to Die
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But, I would bet that the biggest threat to Nokona is not cheaper gloves produced overseas, but the decline in youth baseball participation compared to other sports. Though perhaps a rapid decline in the number of kids participating in football could mean some of them playing baseball instead. I suspect that my kids would end up playing soccer since it's the only sport I watch these days.
Soccer probably has the best opportunity for growth from the demise of American Football.
I would expect only for those families who choose to have their kid participate in only one sport; football and baseball can both be pretty expensive, equipment and training wise.
It is parents with unrealistic visions of scholarships or professional careers who push young kids to play a single sport year round.
There will always be a small number of parents who push their kids too hard and it's up to the leagues and other coaches to step in when it could be dangerous. That said, the vast majority of kids still practicing baseball in the summer and fall are out there because THEY enjoy it and they themselves want to get better at their sport.
Soccer is available year round and has been since I was a child.
My son's little league team lost 4-5 players year to year to youth football (!) and soccer leagues at age 6. It's a big time commitment, although I'm shocked that a parent would allow a child that young to play football at all.
Buying a quality glove is worth the investment. The good ones will last forever.
I suspect restrictions on older kids will develop in the coming years as well. I would guess it will always be a part of professional play, but college level and under probably should do away with it.
This must be new. I refereed youth soccer around 2003 and this was def. not the case then.
Edit: It looks like this change was made November 2015: http://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2015/11/09/22/57/151109-usso...
>I would guess it will always be a part of professional play, but college level and under probably should do away with it.
Wat. I played youth and highschool Soccer and was never injured or saw someone injured by contact with the call when heading ball... (it was always due to mistaken player contact).
Reading this it might be real... Bizarre. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/1...
We used to think it was the major concussions that did the long-term damage, and you'd be fine if you avoided the big shots as a boxer (let's say). Modern research shows that the sustained, repeated, sub-concussive blows are genuinely bad for the brain. Training itself can be a major cause of brain damage.
Soccer doesn't focus exclusively on heading the ball, but practicing heading for years, and pushing your limits in games, definitely adds up and has resulted in soccer players with CTE. Major concussive events, like head-to-head collisions, are decidedly no help on top of those training regimes.
I saw some kids playing a pickup game a few months ago and it blew my mind. Hadn't seen that in years, or since.
When I was a kid in the 1980s it was not uncommon to play baseball or whiffleball on a pickup basis with one's friends.
When my dad was a kid in a major US city in the 40s and 50s he said you didn't even need to gather friends; there was pretty much always a baseball game or three being play amongst kids at the park that you could get into.
It's sad, in a way, but (as much as I love it) baseball's kind of an awkward sport because you need so many people to play anything resembling an actual game.
(I know you can have a lot of fun playing catch with two people, or just pitching and hitting with two or three people... spent hundreds of hours doing these things myself)
The net effect was that we had to work with every player as if they had no previous exposure to the game. Every rule, every strategy, and every technique had to be explained from scratch.
Kids were more likely to bring a soccer ball to practice and want to kick it around the outfield before a game than take batting practice.
The other thing killing the sport is time. We see lacrosse teams arrive at the field next to us, play a game, and go home just in the time that we are stretching out, throwing, doing batting practice and infield warmups before a game. The lax kids (and parents) are home firing up the BBQ before the first pitch has been thrown.
Left Boston, came back 8 years later, found that you can only watch games on cable and tickets are unbelievably expensive. The Red Sox's new owners want to make a lot of money and hire top talent to make them a winning team. But not all fans can afford to go along for the ride.
Now I have a family. We don't have cable so my son can't watch 95% of games on TV. The one time four of us went to Fenway it was nearly $400 about 15 rows back from the third base line. How can anyone keep that up? He never got a chance to be a fan like I did.
We did play catch and did some batting practice in the park when he was about 8 or 9, but that dropped off as he tried different sports and didn't have the connection with professional baseball. Now, for him, the only sports he watches are football and basketball, and the only sports he plays for fun are basketball, touch football, soccer, and ultimate frisbee.
Our boys are three sport athletes in high school and it still takes serious bribes to get them to watch any sporting event with me. The one positive note is that they are just as interested in watching women compete as men. I think we have been to an equal number of men's and women's college hockey games, which I am not sure I would have been as open to back in the 70s and 80s.
The net effect was that we had to work with every player as if they had no previous exposure to the game. Every rule, every strategy, and every technique had to be explained from scratch.
But, even though it's sad, I'm fine with it. Things change. Really, as long as kids are playing sports... I think that's fine. Baseball (as much as I love the game) is arguably one of the worst sports for kids because you spend 90% of your time waiting for your turn at bat, or waiting for the ball to be hit to you.
I still think baseball has the best simple pleasures of any sport, though. Hitting a baseball and catching a baseball. Still my two favorite things in sports.
The other thing killing the sport is time. We see lacrosse teams arrive at the field next to us, play a game, and go home just in the time that we are stretching out, throwing, doing batting practice and infield warmups before a game. The lax kids (and parents) are home firing up the BBQ before the first pitch has been thrown.
Leaving that aside though, what does it matter where it gets made? American workers are not specially more or less deserving than those in other countries, and that we have managed to coordinate it so the countries with comparative advantages in glove production are producing most of the gloves is something to celebrate, not bemoan.
The chocolate analogy isn’t quite comparable here. In that example, the Swiss presumably aren’t setting up their own factories in the US and dictating the recipe. The USA and Switzerland have different food labeling laws and understandings of what chocolate is, so if the Swiss just imported just any US chocolate, then sure, it would jar with the traditional culture.
In addition, the arctic/ mountain fox brand is pretty new. It'd be like the north face shoppers not liking it since it moved prod abroad. Here we're talking about a national symbol as well as a sentimental item. Baseball gloves, Randoserus.
Is Jansport "iconic" or is it just "ubiquitous"? I'd say it's the latter. A better comparison might be Victorinox deciding too offshore Swiss Army knives to Korea or Thailand.
Intrinsically more connected to you, and therefore worthy of you giving at least somewhat higher priority on their welfare? Definitely yes.
Because their related? We all are at some level. Because they raised you (father and mother might count, but probably not cousins, nieces or nephews)
More than that, there's a strong perception that American goods are superior to cheaper foreign made ones. I don't know if that's true in this case but it doesn't seem unlikely. Look at all the people about to get blinded by foreign made solar eclipse glasses.
Gloves by Rawlings, Wilson, et al go for $40 to $60, with the top of the line at $100.
[Source: Baseball Warehouse .com]
It's sad but true. There is a fear that millennials become smarter than their parents and don't need to consume to build their identity.
You have the causality reversed.
I absolutely and unsarcastically adore the concept of buying things for life. I really do. When I read this article, my first thought was: "I want one of those gloves." However, that concept seldom makes any sense when it comes to anything that a child wears.
I'm pretty sure most of the people expressing the "buy your kid a quality baseball glove for life!" sentiment have no experience with (a) baseball (b) baseball gloves (c) children.
Kids' baseball gloves last as long as they need to: a few years. Because that's how long it will take for your kid to outgrow it. Investing megabucks into an heirloom-quality glove for an 8 year-old kid is insanity.
Now, maybe a baseball glove could be a treasured thing you hand down from kid to kid in the family or the neighborhood. But hand-me-down baseball gloves are a little nasty.
Your hand, which is invariably covered in lots of unsavory stuff (dirt, sweat, spit, sometimes sticky substances from the baseball bats) gets stuffed inside the glove for loooong periods of time, during which it sweats profusely. Being "gifted" with an "heirloom" baseball glove as a kid would have grossed me out. I would have enjoyed such a gift about as much as a hand-me-down jock strap.
I also hate to say this (because I like the idea of buying American) but unless you're playing a hell of a lot of baseball, $50-$100 gloves made in China also last a loooooooooooooooooooooong time if you oil them once a year or so. Unless you're playing baseball full-time, you do not need to spend hundreds of bucks to get something that will last you decades. Making a baseball glove is not rocket science. It's leather. Made into a glove.
I used it when I was 10 and before that, I had a cheap glove.
It wasn't gross. It was broken in, comfortable and much easier to use than a new glove.
Also, a cheap glove doesn't last as long as you think.
My experience is that if oiled (I like mink oil, though some say it's too heavy) any reasonable grade of leather glove, stored indoors, will last at least a decade of occasional use. My Ken Griffey Jr. glove (Wilson? Rawlings? I forget) has lived such a life. I think I bought for around $40 in 2001; I remember it being roughly one tier up from the cheapest glove you could buy. I've admittedly not played a ton of ball with it, but the leather's in great shape, no cracking anywhere... this thing might outlive me unless I get off my butt and join an old man's league every summer.
Recently threw out some gloves I owned as a kid in the 80s. The leather was dry but not cracked; I was tempted to oil them just to see if they could be brought back to life.
What's your experience been?
Not saying you do this, but I think a lot of people store their gloves in their garages or some other place where they bake in the summer and freeze in the winter. That'll kill a glove for sure and while ultra-high-quality leather will surely survive this kind of treatment longer than cheap leather, it's no way to treat a glove of any kind.
I'm sure that inexpensive gloves that see plenty of honest use (2, 3, 4+ practices or games a week) don't live forever either.
We had them for 3-4 seasons before they got stowed. When I stowed mine, the weave for the net between the first finger and thumb was coming undone and a few years later, the gloves were incredibly stiff and tore. We ended up pitching them (no longer played baseball and they were cheap) but when we did, I found my father's glove and it still worked (it was stored with the cheap ones). A little oil and it was back like new (or at least, new when I got it from him)
As for kids gloves I used the same gloves from when I was 10 until I graduated high school. If you take care of your gloves most quality leather will withstand yearly wear and tear.
Moral of the story: take care of you stuff. Doesn't matter if you pay $170 to $280. Invest in quality.
I feel this is the most important sentence in the article. The important question is not about individual products for end-users, but about intermediate means of manufacturing automation.
I really don't know which countries are most advanced in this area, but it makes the question of human labor less important. Or, at least it moves it up the skills ladder, from "making a glove" to "designing a robot".
What I think matters, is where we are going, not where we are. You give China as evidence of the human dominated state of manufacturing. I give it as evidence of the shift toward robot dominated manufacturing: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601215/china-is-building-...
My fuzzy recollection is they sold out to Levi's, which mismanaged it into nonexistence. The patents prevented replacement. And the stitching factory used eventually died.
So at least some partially-automated traditionally-low-margin industry is/was possible in the US. But the usual issues of losing needed industry infrastructure still apply.
It's not a huge technological leap from "robot learns to play Dota" to "robot learns to stitch baseball gloves". Machine vision and reinforcement learning were always the technologies holding back interesting applications of robotics. And now they are basically solved problems.
Neither is particularly easy to pack in a suitcase.
Usually in cricket only the keeper will use gloves. Is it just a surface area thing?
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