A baseball glove is basically an addition
to your hand that allows you to trap the ball
between the thumb and the index finger
in such a fashion that you can
make a great catch and throw it back.
From the time I started playing baseball
I've been in love with the game.
Something very basic about it.
It's not about fads or this or that,
it's about a rich heritage that goes back
you know, over a hundred years.
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I'm Rob Storey.
I'm the Executive Vice President of Nokona Ball Gloves.
We make world-class ball gloves here in Nokona, Texas.
To build a glove you're going to have to have
the right leather.
We use a number of different leathers,
such as kangaroo, cowhide, buffalo, even some Cayman.
When that comes in to us, we begin the grading process.
We're looking for any blemishes, scars, defects.
With a classic walnut glove, we're going to be using
a leather that we call Walnut Crunch.
It's very durable, but very easy to break in.
A lot of players like that because they can go out
and play catch immediately.
We introduced some cutting dies, or what we call clickers.
Basically big cookie cutters.
We gotta take that leather and cut it into about
25 different pieces.
We have somewhere about 2000 cutting dies.
While the leather's still flat,
do what we call hot-stamping.
We'll take other pieces to the embroidery station.
Where we have fixed and single-head machines
that can pump out four to 500 gloves a day.
Putting all that information somewhere on the leather
so that the customer is educated.
Once that's done, then it's time to transition
over to the stitching department.
Two or three of the pieces go a different direction
where they're made into the web or the pocket of the glove.
Another station will start the interior lining.
This is the part that the hand touches.
Not only the palm lining, but the mac fingers,
as well as three center pads inside.
Start to welt those parts together while we're
adding the third piece of material
in between the seams, setting the spine to the backs
of the fingers of the glove.
Really at that point, you begin
to see the glove come together.
The fingers are finally married to the front.
And it becomes a shell.
Once you've closed the glove, it's inside-out.
Literally pushed the leather down,
and pushed the inside back to the outside.
Then it's time to start shaping the glove,
and we do that through a series of forms
that look like giant hands.
They're heated to about 250 degrees Fahrenheit.
Pulled around and shaped with a mallet
so that all the welting and all the seams
are just perfectly aligned.
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Living in a small town like Nokona, Texas
is a big part of who I am.
I think Nokona Ball Gloves
wouldn't necessarily work somewhere else.
It's about the local people and the pride.
The town itself is very much a part of the final product.
I'm a fourth-generation family member in the company
and in the 1960's, most baseball glove manufacturers
decided to take their manufacturive offshore.
My grandfather, Bob Storey, didn't want to do that.
He wanted to give employment to the locals.
He made a decision at that point that was
very crucial to the long-term history
of our company, and that was that
we were going to be American-made.
Something that's been a part of Americana
for decades and decades but
they can't find anywhere else now in the United States.
There are up to 40 different labor operations
that go into making a glove.
And so it's not just stickin'
a piece of leather in a machine.
More and more people are starting to realize
just because you can make it cheaply somewhere else
that doesn't make it good.
You've gotta put the very best craftsmanship into the glove.
We think our history of 80-plus years of doing that,
we've learned how to do it.
Leather's one of the most
interesting materials known to man.
The feel as it firmly wraps around your hand,
the subtle pop as the ball hits it,
these characteristic are things that make
crafting, and with this medium, one of the most
enjoyable parts of my job.
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After the forming marry the outside shell
with the inside lining.
We're going to be gluing some parts together.
So in the inside liner,
take long strips of tensile-strength laces,
and start filling 120 holes in the glove.
Cosmoline holds the palm to the inside of the liner.
It's a very heavy form of petroleum jelly.
It looks a lot like peanut butter.
It's a great adhesive.
We can open up a glove 10 years later
and that stuff's still sticky inside.
First the top fingers,
then the bottom perimeter of the glove.
And finally the web, which usually kind of gives
the glove it's character, into one finalize piece.
We will physically beat the palm of the glove.
That softens the glove, shapes the leather,
take out all the wrinkles, and makes it just right.
We take hot petroleum jelly and lanolin
and we spray that onto the glove
so that we have a very uniform layer of oil
that starts to moisturize the leather.
Just like skin, if left to its own design,
will start to dry out and crack and flake.
We bag, we tag the glove, seal it up
and get it ready to go out to the market.
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Even though it's evolved through the years,
it's still very very personal to each player
that uses the glove.
I think to our customers, Nokona Ball Gloves
represent a product that is rich in heritage,
at the top level of the game,
and hopefully lasts for decades to come.