The day that changed everything for Troy Tulowitzki began innocently enough.

Walking into the Coliseum with his father for an Oakland Athletics game in the late 1980s, he picked up a plastic glove during a promotional giveaway - and the game faded instantly into the background.

"I don't remember who played," said the Rockies shortstop, 4 at the time. "I don't remember anything about the game. I just remember the glove. I probably looked at it the whole game. I loved playing with it, too. I used it for a year; by the end of the year, it just disintegrated in my hands."

In New York in the 1940s, Joe Torre received his first glove - a gift from his sister.

"She went into the convent when I was like 11 years old," the New York Yankees manager said in Denver in June. "She knew she had a better chance of me saying a prayer when I put the glove on than by giving me rosary beads."

A religious experience?

Maybe not. But unlike a hockey stick, a 9-iron or a basketball, a baseball glove is forever, turning boys on to an old game and turning graying men back into boys.

Yellow-brown leather, loose rawhide strands, the smell of sweat and resin - the basics never change, intoxicating big leaguers and Little Leaguers alike.

Boys still sleep with their first glove, dreaming of summer. Middle-aged men pluck them from the attic, bringing back the past. Major leaguers oil them down and talk them up, treating them almost like humans. In fact, more than a piece of sports equipment, a glove is a virtual appendage.

"In college, I took my glove on the bus with me. I just figured if it was with me, it was going to be good to me," Tulowitzki said. "I wish I could still do that; we just travel so much. . . . But when I pack in my bag, I know right where it is."

Added Tulowitzki, examining his current glove, the one he used while pulling an unassisted triple play this season: "I'd say this is my favorite one. But it's only right to say that. I have to play a game tonight so, hopefully, it'll be good to me."

Noah Liberman documented this infatuation in a book, Glove Affairs: The Romance, History and Tradition of the Baseball Glove.

"The baseball glove is the one piece of sports equipment that molds to your body. It fits you and only you," he said.

So personal was San Francisco pitcher Mike Krukow's relationship with his glove that he refused to part ways with it, right up to the moment it disintegrated on the mound.

So smelly and ugly was the glove of former Rockies player and current special assistant Walt Weiss, his teammates dubbed it "The Creature." But he refused to give it up, even after a decade.

Seeing the glove he used in the World Series on display in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Johnny Damon couldn't help but feel a swell of pride, his thoughts drifting back to his baseball roots in Orlando, Fla.

"My first glove was actually a right-handed one I shared with kids in the neighborhood," the Yankees outfielder said. "I didn't get the right kind (left-handed) until a friend of mine got a new one and gave me his old one. Then I saw a glove in a store; I ended going around cutting grass until I had enough money to buy it. It was a Rawlings - it's been a Rawlings ever since."

But Damon is no sentimentalist. A binge of errors and . . .

"It's gone," he said.

After committing six errors during a dark stretch three years ago, Cleveland Indians shortstop Omar Vizquel recreated a scene from the movie Major League, sacrificing his wayward glove during a ghoulish ceremony that featured an altar, a bottle of wine, a hanging roast chicken, a Buddha-like figure, 14 candles, incense, two rosaries and a baseball with "the curse is killed" written on it.

"He's doing well now," teammate Tim Laker reported afterward. "I don't think it's because of the glove, but you never know."

Not every player is wired - or weird - concerning gloves.

"I'm not superstitious," Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter said. "I usually break in two a year, during spring training. Then it's ready to go. It's not a big deal."

In the early years, real men wouldn't wear gloves. Doug Allison of the Cincinnati Red Stockings was the first professional to don one in a game in 1870, according to Liberman. Rawlings introduced a puffy, pillowlike model in 1919, another milestone in the sport's evolution.

But the revolution in baseball hand wear occurred in the early 1950s, while Ted Javor ate lunch. Apparently bored, his eyes came to rest on a door hinge, which opened his mind to this insight: Why not create a hinge-action baseball glove? The result was the Wilson A200, baseball's version of the automatic transmission.

"Everybody wanted one," Al Kaline recalled several years ago. "There was a mad rush when they brought them out in spring training. The A200 gave you so much confidence, particularly when you had to catch the ball with one hand. You didn't have to worry about a small area in your palm to catch the ball like you did with the other gloves. Now you had a web all the way down to the heel and a deep, soft pocket in the middle. And when you reached to make the catch, the glove seemed to automatically collapse around the ball."

Yet, for their 21st century sophistication, gloves today are no more complex than the dreams of a 4-year-old boy or girl.

"My dad brought my first baseball glove home," Rockies first basemen Todd Helton said. "It was a good glove. It must have sentimental value because I still have the dang thing."

Tulowitzki keeps his gloves in his father's garage.

"I'm probably up to 10 now," he said. "I might still have that plastic one. They just kind of lay there in this plastic tub. Every once in a while, when I go home, I pick 'em up. I take great pride in my glove."

Baseball mitts and the people who wear them

He said it

"I don't think it matters how old you are, or the level of ball you play - there's nothing more personal than your own baseball glove."

Yogi Berra

Nicknames

• Former Rockies infielder Charlie Hayes called his glove "Slump" because that's what it helped put batters into.

• Third basemen Aurelio Rodriguez, who played 17 years in the majors, painted his glove black and called it "The Black Hand."

• Cleveland Indians utilityman Jeff Manto was dubbed "The Store" because he took 13 gloves with him on trips. His stash included two catcher's mitts, two first baseman's mitts and a miniature infielder's glove. "The equipment man hates me," he told Sports Illustrated in 1991.

Unraveled

• If Zoilo Versailles made an error during his heyday in the 1960s, he simply threw away a glove. His glove company cut ties with him and the Minnesota Twins shortstop was forced to go to sporting goods stores for his mitts.

• In 2005, Washington Nationals pitcher Livan Hernandez refused to pay ransom for the glove he tossed into the stands after being yanked from a game.

• After blowing a play one day, St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith started screaming at his glove in the dugout. "How could you miss that ball?"

Ultimate mitt

It looms above the left-field bleachers at AT&T Park in San Francisco, a 26-foot-tall glove in the land of the Giants. The 20,000-pound steel-and-fiberglass mitt is modeled on a 1927 glove, one Giants senior vice president Jack Bair used as a boy.

Outside the lines

• Bill Gates drew up a formal contract with his sister when he was 9. It allowed him rights to use her baseball mitt in exchange for a payment of $5.

• Only six 19th century fingerless gloves are known to exist today. They're worth about $15,000 apiece.

• In 2003, actress/director Penny Marshall bought New York Yankees legend Lou Gehrig's last glove for $387,500.

Boys will be boys

Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi packed his glove when he visited Camp David in summer 2001. During a break in meetings with President Bush, the world leaders played catch by the pool.

Special order

Pat Venditte of Creighton University is believed to be the only ambidextrous pitcher in NCAA Division I. He used a custom-made glove in the spring that featured four fingers flanked by two thumbs so he easily could slip it on either hand. It was custom-made by Louisville Slugger.

He said it II

"Nothing smells like a baseball glove. It (smells) like a horse, cow, or leather. The smell of a baseball glove is one of the most profound aromas on the planet. I didn't have a teddy bear, so I had a glove."

Ron Shelton, who directed and wrote Bull Durham, to The (Newark) Star-Ledger.Sources: The Seattle Times, Baseball Digest, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Giants.

latimerc@RockyMountainNews.com

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