Page 6 - April 2021 Issue.indd

Gloves Glamorize
Great American

Pastime for
Tony Gianninoto

By JOHN P. EVANS III

Baseball fans who are also memorabilia
collectors have many different ways
to celebrate the Great American
Pastime. Some collect baseball cards, or
bobbleheads. Maybe caps and jerseys.
For others, it’s programs or ticket stubs.

For Denton’s Tony Gianninoto, it’s
baseball gloves and mitts. He’s not in
it for the money, but for the memories. Tony Gianninoto with his glove collection at the Federalsburg Hobby Fair in 2019.

Those memories take him all the way
back to his childhood, when he used to
play catch with his father.

“Pops (his dad) played on the Greensboro
baseball team in the Marydel League for
10 years (from 1950 to 1960). I was a
young boy at the time,” said Tony, who
was a good enough player to play at
Salisbury State University in his college
days.

“The first glove I got was my dad’s
catcher’s mitt. He gave it to me when
I was a young kid and it really meant
something to me,” said Gianninoto,
whose collection numbers 25 historical
gloves, but is set to increase by two gloves
when his latest purchases are delivered.
“My latest purchases are a George A. The four gloves are shown with the leather creme he uses to condition the mitts. Plus,

Reach glove made in Greensboro and there is a vintage baseball he uses. The four gloves are: back row, Tony's father's catcher's

a Rawlings Brooks Robinson glove,” mitt from the 1940s; a George A. Reach glove made in Greensboro. a Brooks Robinson
he said, adding that his collection is glove from the mid-1960s. In the front row is a Eddie Leonard Sporting Goods glove
comprised of gloves almost entirely from the 1930s, which were manufactured in Annapolis.
from the 1970s and older.
“There are not any really valuable gloves recondition them. That’s where I get a lot Tony said his hobby of collecting

in my collection. Their value is in the of the enjoyment from my collection,” he baseball gloves and mitts- a glove has

sentimentality they mean to me, not in said. “I try to get as many vintage gloves fingers, a mitt does not – comes from
how much they are worth in dollars,” as I can. That’s where I get the pleasure, his love for baseball and the fact that his

he said. bringing them back to life.” dad was a shoe repairman and worked a
lot with leather.
Gianninoto has purchased gloves at He said he recently attended an auction

auctions, flea markets, on the internet at American Corner and saw a couple Tony and his wife, Karen, make several

and on E-Bay. He looks for heavily-worn of gloves for sale there, but they were trips a year to Springfield, Ohio, where
gloves that need to be repaired and then too expensive. he has found a few of his mitts. He will
reconditions them. often bring a few of his gloves with him

“I have a limit of what I will spend,” he to work on during the trips.
“I buy gloves in a lot of different said.
conditions, at least 20 years old, then
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