The firm making baseball gloves
EVER seriously considered a baseball glove? “The feel as it firmly wraps around your hand, the subtle pop as a ball hits it. These characteristics are things that make crafting with [leather] one of the most enjoyable parts of my job. It’s one of the most interesting materials known to man.”
That’s from Rob Storey, executive vice-president of Nokona Ball Gloves. And he should know. He’s a fourth-generation family member working at Nokona, the only remaining ball glove manufacturer in America.
Nokona has been crafting gloves since 1934 in the small town of Nocona, Texas. The company name is spelled with a “k” because it was told the town’s name could not be trademarked.
“The town itself is very much part of the final product,” says Storey, whose grandfather, Roberts Storey, steered the company toward glove manufacturing in the 1930s.
“To build a glove, you have to have the right leather,” Storey says of the first step in creating a glove.
Nokona uses kangaroo, cowhide, buffalo, and even caiman leathers to create the more than 40,000 gloves produced each year at the factory. When the leathers arrive at Nokona, they are graded to ensure there are no blemishes, scars, or defects.
Prices range from US$130 for a child’s glove to US$290 for a Walnut Crunch adult version and higher for custom creations and niche leather models.
“There are up to 40 different labour operations that go into making a glove,” says Storey of the almost four hours it takes to complete one mitt. “It’s not just sticking a piece of leather in a machine.”
To begin, dies (or “clickers”) are used to cut the leather into about 25 pieces. Storey says Nokona has about 2,000 different dies.
While the leather used for outer pieces is still flat, it is hot-stamped with the company logo and then transferred to the embroidery station, where machines pump out about 400 to 500 pieces of embroidered leather a day.
Individual cuts are then moved over to the stitching department. One station sews pieces together to create the web, or pocket, of the glove. A separate stitching station will begin assembling the interior, including the palm and back lining, as well as three centre pads. Individual pieces are welted together by adding a thin piece of leather, which acts as a spine, to the backs of the fingers of the glove. At this stage, the item is inside-out.
“Really, at that point we begin to see the glove come together,” Storey says. “The fingers are finally married to the front, and it becomes a shell.”
Once the shell is inverted to