The Man Behind The Gloves

When Bob Clevenhagen sits down to watch a baseball game, he pays more attention to players’ gloves than to the score.

He’ll know right away if the New York Yankees’ Derek Jeter or the St. Louis Cardinals’ Ray Lankford is in a game simply by looking at the model of gloves and color of laces. (Blue for Jeter. Red for Lankford).

From the cheap seats he could pick out the little pieces of plastic Mark McGwire has sewn into his first baseman’s mitt to give it extra strength. And with one glance at the TV, he could tell whether the Milwaukee Brewers’ Marquis Grissom has finally traded in that old workhorse he’s been wearing for years in favor of a new model.

Clevenhagen designed all those gloves for all those players.

“I’ve been doing this for 22 years,” he says, showing visitors around his office at the Rawlings Sporting Goods plant in this Ozarks town of 3,000.

With cow pastures spreading out on all sides of Ava, this is the image of small-town Americana, a place where baseball gloves ought to be made.

And here they are made, hundreds each day. Most of them are top-of-the-line models that sell for $150 or more in stores around the country, plant manager Don Walker says.

The plant also produces brightly colored protective helmets for batters and catchers, turns out equipment for other sports, and stamps commemorative baseballs, basketballs and other memorabilia. And it tests major league baseballs for quality and consistency.

But it is in Clevenhagen’s office, just off the main glove production floor, where some of the crown jewels of baseball are produced. There, he meticulously designs the gloves that go on the hands of about half of the nation’s major leaguers.

They are gloves that come with names like Ken Griffey Jr., Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn (who also wants lightning bolts on his) burned into the leather.

“I like them all,” he says with a smile, declining to name a favorite player. “They’re all pretty nice guys, really.”

Around the plant in general, however, it’s clear that McGwire, the Cardinals’ big first baseman, is a huge hero in this town some 170 miles southwest of St. Louis.

When McGwire shattered Roger Maris’ record last year with 70 homers, it was the talk of the plant for months.

“I made him his first glove in ‘84,” Clevenhagen recalls. “When he was going to the Olympics. He was the backup for Will Clark.”

He’s been making them ever since. But then it seems like he’s been making gloves for just about everybody ever since. Not just for ballplayers, but for actors who play ballplayers in the movies, even for presidents who throw out the first ball on opening day.

The autographs that fill his office could take up a small wing of the Hall of Fame, with names like Bob Gibson, Stan Musial, Johnny Bench and Steve Carlton, not to mention Bill Clinton, George Bush, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

There’s even one from Michael Jordan, which he signed for Clevenhagen when Jordan took his brief sabbatical from the Chicago Bulls to play minor league baseball.

“To Bob, enjoy the movie and thank you for the beautiful gloves,” says an inscription from Kevin Costner, whom Clevenhagen helped get gloves for the new movie “For Love of the Game.”

“I had to make four for him,” the designer recalls. “One got stolen from the set. He used two in the movie. And he signed one and sent it back to me.”

Clevenhagen designs gloves by hand, using his office computer only for tracking orders.

To make a glove, Clevenhagen jots down a few notes from the player’s instructions, sketches out some ideas on paper, cuts out a few patterns, then gets down to work shaping the finished product. He’ll make seven or eight prototypes before he’s got one good enough to turn over to production people.

“I don’t know of any other way you could do it, really,” he muses. “I don’t know how you could do it on a computer.”

This kind of work represents a time-honored tradition at Rawlings, where Clevenhagen is only the third glove designer in the company’s history. When the first one, Harry Latina, retired after decades, son Rollie took over.

The 54-year-old Clevenhagen works alongside his own son, Brad, and hopes that someday his son will be his replacement.

For now, they work together producing about four gloves a year for most players. Then, when it’s time to make four more next year, Clevenhagen will recall the specifications from memory, adding whatever requested changes.

Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Kevin Brown sent his back this year, asking for less padding, and Clevenhagen quickly complied.

And then there are some players, like Grissom, who never ask for anything new, who just keep using the same glove.

“We repair it for him almost every year,” Clevenhagen says.

But those players seem to be a fading breed, as most everybody these days wants something new. It was different in the old days.

“The Kansas City Royals’ Amos Otis used the same glove his whole career,” Clevenhagen says. “You could see his hand right through it, it was worn plain through.”

But the quality and consistency of gloves back then--Otis played from 1967-84--wasn’t what it is today.

“Back then,” Clevenhagen recalls, “you were really lucky if you found a good glove. And if you did, you’d hang onto it.”