A Grip on Sports: The right Christmas present can not only put a smile on a child’s face, it can bind generations together

A GRIP ON SPORTS • The best Christmas stories aren’t found on the Hallmark Channel. They don’t include the hunt for the year’s hot toy. They aren’t even directed by Frank Capra. Nope. The best Christmas stories are about family. They are quiet memories of love. Of gifts that mean something nearly a hundred years later.

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• We have one such story to share. It concerns a baseball glove. More than one glove, actually. And how they were able to bind three generations together.

It starts with a ragged piece of leather my dad kept locked away in a carport trunk when I was growing up.

The ancient glove was a dark brown. Not khaki, like a lot of baseball gloves these days, but chocolate. Dark chocolate. Though that wasn’t what made it stand out. (The glove pictured, courtesy of baseballglovecollector.com, comes close to what I remember.)

It only had space for three fingers and a thumb. It was flat. Nearly perfect skipping-rock flat. There was no pocket, only an indentation about the size of a baseball just below the web. It looked like two pieces of leather had been held on one end, stuffed with some sort of animal hair and then sewn together.

You could have used it as a pillow.

Maybe my dad did on those warm Southern California Sundays when he was young and the manager gave him a few bucks to pitch both ends of a doubleheader. But probably not. Not this glove. This glove was special. It was a gift from his mother.

Cosma didn’t really understand my dad’s love of baseball. But she understood the game helped keep him out of trouble, something he was better at finding than he was at throwing a curve ball. And he had a great curve ball.

Dad grew up in poverty. The type that can destroy a person. His mother, all 4-foot-11 of her, had buried three husbands, raised a handful of kids basically on her own and was trying like crazy to get through the Depression without losing my dad, her baby, to the streets.

He knew the L.A. County judicial system as well as he knew Sierra Madre’s orange groves. He skipped school. He stole food. He fought everyone. He was headed down a path from which there was no coming back.

My grandmother knew this. She was, as my dad told me so many years later, desperate. Her answer was to work harder. Not harder on  him but taking extra cleaning shifts. More nights. More weekends. Scrubbing toilets. Pounding drapes. She saved precious pennies and nickels. And earned enough extra to buy him a reason to behave.

Up until then, my dad had used whatever he could cobble together as a baseball glove. Ratty pieces of leather held together by discarded string, stuffed and re-stuffed with old newspapers. Crap no one else wanted. Just to be able to play.

Until that one Christmas when he was just hitting his teen years. And his mother gave him a new glove. Even 40-plus years later, when my dad explained it to me the first time, he couldn’t hold his emotions in check. His mother had been a saint. That one Christmas present was a physical manifestation of her beatification.

An old piece of leather connecting him to her in ways I still can’t understand. Maybe, in some way, it saved his life. I don’t know. All I know is he passed the gift along. Not the glove itself. That disappeared long before he passed, neither he nor I knowing what happened to it. No, he did what his mother did. He bought my eldest son his first glove when he was just a toddler. A small leather one from Rawlings.

It was, for years, a cherished Christmas present from grandpa. And, though my son didn’t know, it was also a gift from his great grandmother as well.

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Gonzaga: Last year’s Christmas break wasn’t really a break for the Zags, as COVID-19 forced them in a bubble throughout. Theo Lawson looks back and ahead to this year’s plans for the basketball team. … Around the WCC, BYU couldn’t get the last shot to drop and fell to Vanderbilt 69-67.

WSU: Though Miami is dealing with coronavirus issues, the Hurricanes said yesterday they are still planning on playing in the Sun Bowl on New Year’s Eve. But then again, Hawaii planned on playing in its bowl game until Thursday, the day before kickoff. Colton Clark has more on Miami’s announcement. … Elsewhere in the Pac-12 and college football, Utah has been through hell the past year. But the Utes have a chance to end on a happier note. … The fortunes of the two desert teams have changed since the regular season ended. … Arizona State just lost another receiver.  … Arizona lost an assistant coach. … Colorado is losing its most talented player. … A UCLA defensive back will miss the Holiday Bowl due to the coronavirus. … In basketball news, Jon Wilner takes a look in the S-R at the tournament chances among conference schools. … Arizona is headed that way but, according to Tommy Lloyd, its bigs need to get tougher. … Stanford picked up another win in Hawaii.

EWU: The Eagles’ coaching staff lost another offensive coordinator this week, as the interim one, Pat McCann, accepted a position at Fresno State. Dan Thompson has more in this story. … Around the Big Sky, Idaho State is filling out its coaching staff. … Montana State has ridden a handful of backups to playoff success. … In basketball news, Fresno State visited Weber State and blitzed the Wildcats 69-43.

Chiefs: Former Spokane players Kailer Yamamoto and Derek Ryan, who both grew up in the area, are now teammates with the Edmonton Oilers. Justin Reed has this story on their differing, though converging, roads to the NHL.

Seahawks: It’s not quite a Christmas miracle, but Dan Doornink has beaten COVID-19 after a long battle. … Jimmy Graham will be back in town again with the Bears. How was that trade? … It seems to be OK to lie about a penalty. At least for the league. … The NFL doesn’t have to follow any rules. One thing the past couple years have taught is there is no one overseeing one of the most lucrative money-making entities in the world. No one. … Tyler Lockett is off the restricted list. And it will be harder for others to be put on it down the road. … The Hawks have to replace quite a few free agents over the next few months.

Kraken: Is it time to change starting goalies?

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• Merry Christmas everyone. We will take off tomorrow and spend the extra few hours with our family (or asleep). Enjoy the day. We plan to be back Sunday but who knows? Maybe Santa will bring us a winning lottery ticket and we will be headed to the South Seas instead. Until later …