A reality check: the retail price of a Nokona kid's glove is $170 to $280.
Gloves by Rawlings, Wilson, et al go for $40 to $60, with the top of the line at $100.
[Source: Baseball Warehouse .com]
Gloves by Rawlings, Wilson, et al go for $40 to $60, with the top of the line at $100.
[Source: Baseball Warehouse .com]
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.
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)