The gloves come with history. They show up at Chris Petroff’s home in suburban Phoenix, a few deliveries per day, UPS, FedEx and regular mail. He will learn the biography of each one.
Petroff can figure out whether a glove was broken in properly. He knows if a player is catching the ball in the pocket consistently or if he struggles with it popping out. If a pitcher has been using any sticky, grip-improving substances, Petroff can tell. A glove that was forgotten in the rain will be obvious, and one that was left in a truck bed to swelter under direct sun will be, too.
Sometimes, the histories are more literal. A letter will be tucked inside the package, handwritten or neatly typed. The most common glove stories are those of family—parents and kids, games of catch, an old favorite needing to be fixed up so it can be passed down. But there are other themes. Some gloves are tied up in friendship. Some come from tragedy, one recovered from the wreckage of a bus crash, another found in the ashes of a house fire. Petroff didn’t need to read the note for that one: He could smell it.
Players from MLB down to Little League send their gloves to Petroff, and, inside his backyard work shed, he re-laces, restores and repairs them. The 43-year-old is officially a professional baseball glove technician. But he is more like a caretaker for the most precious of sports equipment. Not every player is particular about their glove. But for those who are? The relationship is personal. Some big leaguers use the same glove not just for multiple seasons but for an entire career. They will give it a name and prevent teammates from borrowing it. (That’s another kind of letter Petroff occasionally gets: ) There are players who do not dare pack their glove in an equipment bag on road trips, holding it tight instead as a priceless carry-on. The glove can be more than an extension of the body. It’s an extension of the self. And for every pro who feels this way, there is a beer league player, or a teenager, or someone who hasn’t played since high school but cannot part with their leather all the same.
They all care deeply about their gloves. So they send them to Petroff, who in just a few years has become the go-to practitioner for many in MLB. He does hundreds of repair jobs each year, gloves and mitts, baseball and softball, minor fixes and full-on rehabilitations. They arrive on his doorstep from all over and range from relatively new to decades old. Every one is part of a love story.
