So much history lies behind the baseball gloves worn by Pittsburgh Pirates, Minnesota Twins and Kansas City Royals. So much leather as well. Last March, 28, it kicked off the new season of the Major League Baseball (MLB), which is the American baseball “Premier League”. The players of the three teams, mentioned above, wear in their hands gloves, a game accessory, made by a small, though historic company, based in Texas: the factory started running, nearly one century ago, as a leather goods manufacturer, then it turned to manufacturing of gloves. They have been always making use of their reference raw material though: leather. In 1926, Mr Rob “Big Bob” Storey, a banker from Nocona, a small village in the county of Montague (3,000 inhabitants), founded the Nokona Leather Goods company, specialized in the production of wallets and bags. Three years later, the Great Depression hit the business and undermined the future of the young enterprise. That did not put off Storey though: in fact, he managed to transform his machinery and workers into a new manufacturing. In 1934, the factory produced the first pair of baseball gloves, coming from Nokona Ball Gloves. ABC television network told about the history of the company, which currently hires 50 blue-collars and manufactures 150 ball gloves a day, during the kick-off of the new official baseball season. The company makes use, for the manufacturing of ball gloves, of hides made in the USA: they mostly buy them in Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Nebraska; subsequently, they have them processed for tanning in Milwaukee and Chicago. “We always strive to use the best possible leather to make the most performing and comfortable ball glove”, told ABC Rob Storey, grandson of the founder and current vice-president of the company.
ABC tell about the (nearly) centennial history of leather baseball gloves used by a few US baseball teams
