I found my old baseball glove. It was filled with orange dirt… and memories.

I found my old baseball glove in the attic a few days ago. It was tucked away in a blue plastic bin with some sort of silver car part that I only vaguely remember seeing before.

The little boy down the street came over to our house after school as he typically does and I urged all the kids to head outside and find something active to do like throwing the ball around. Lacking imagination, they took that suggestion literally and the friend trotted to his house and returned a minute or two later with his shiny new baseball glove and two balls. He recently joined a baseball team for the first time so he’s a bit of an expert on throwing and catching.

My 10-year-old has never really played baseball but he asked me if we still had a glove he could use. I told him no, probably not, and he went back outside to play. Then I thought about it for a minute and jogged upstairs to have a quick look in the attic.

I found the glove in literally the first box I opened which is about as miraculous as the decrepit Sid Bream legging it out from second base to win game seven of the NLCS for the Atlanta Braves in 1992 while I was sleeping (yes, I’m still bitter about missing the end of that game live).

Not only was 1992 the year my beloved (at the time) Atlanta Braves made the World Series (and lost, of course) but it was also probably one of the last years I played baseball.

Baseball was the first sport I loved. I still have very vague memories of playing it with my two best friends in my small backyard when we were four or five years old. A screened porch with a white metal roof jutted out into the yard, making the home plate area of our field very narrow and cramped but we managed. I remember when one of us caught a batted ball out of the air for the first time like a real baseball player on TV. We were so excited that we ran around to the front of the house to find my mom so we could fill her in on all the incredible details.

I played Little League baseball from kindergarten through sixth grade, finally quitting when my anxiety about making mistakes on the field and/or getting hit by the ball became too great. I got nailed in the helmet by fastballs at practice and in games several times by wild pitchers and I lost my nerve.

I hung up the old Louisville Slugger glove and it eventually made its way into a box that apparently has moved with me several times in my adult life. It’s a well-traveled glove. It’s seen a few things. Mostly the inside of a box, yes, but the inside of a box in various geographic locations in Central Florida!

The glove was stiff and ornery when I rescued it. Very relatable. I blew on it to remove some of the loose dust and grime like I was a character in a movie exploring an old and potentially haunted house. I used both hands to bend the glove in various directions, trying to loosen it up. I thought about baseball glove oil. I briefly considered shopping for some online before remembering we’d probably use this glove once and then never again. I remembered how I used to knead the oil into the leather, place a baseball inside the glove, wrap rubberbands around it to hold it in place, and then (this seems really weird and far-fetched but it feels so familiar it has to be true) place it under my mattress to help shape the pocket? I feel like that’s what Tim, my forever baseball coach and the dad of my two best friends, told me to do. It was the only way to get a glove just right.

After bending the glove every which way, I slipped my left hand inside, wriggling my fingers against the rough and fraying interior. And when my hand settled into the old, well-worn grooves a sizzle of electricity shot up my arm because it felt like coming home.

Just kidding. It felt like an old glove.

As one is required to do anytime you have a baseball glove on your hand, I socked my right fist into the glove’s pocket a few times, making that beautiful thwacking sound. Then, I headed back downstairs and outside, practically overflowing with memories and expectations.

I immediately remembered Coach Tim’s secret signals he delivered to the batter and base runners from his position in the coach’s box along the third baseline. Top of the hat was take. Belt was bunt. And so on. Even three decades later, I wouldn’t think of revealing these signals BUT knowing them doesn’t help at all for one glorious reason. The signal was only “on” if Coach went to that signal immediately after the super secret key signal, and get this… that key signal changed every game!

For example, if the key signal for the game was the earlobe, then a touch of the earlobe followed by a touch of the belt would instruct the batter to bunt. So, if for some reason we get the team back together, which would admittedly be weird since we’re all in our forties now, and you’re playing against us at the old ballpark down off Sisson Road, you’ll still have absolutely no idea if Coach’s belt tap means bunt OR if it’s a complete decoy. Good luck with that!

I found my son and his friend outside getting ready to have a catch. My son exclaimed, “We do have a glove!” You can’t get anything past him.

He pressed and cajoled the glove onto his hand, mistakenly putting it on his right hand first because, again, he doesn’t play baseball, before fitting it partway onto his left hand. The complaints started immediately. It’s old. It’s too big. I can’t close it. My hand is covered in this weird orange dust.

Look, kid. That’s not just a glove. It’s history. It’s magic. It’s a piece of who I am. Or who I was? It’s hard to say sometimes.

I’m a grown man, probably on the downside of the mountain if we’re being honest, but a little piece of me will always be that kid who loved baseball and got excited about new batting gloves and a bright blue aluminum bat that might’ve had a touch of titanium in it because that was about the time titanium was invented.

To be fair, the glove was a bit of a mess overall after sitting in a musty attic for years and years. And his observation that there was orange dust on his hand was accurate. He had no idea where the orange dust could have come from but I immediately did.

And that’s when the tingle of electricity coursed through my body. For real this time.

That orange dirt or dust or whatever you want to call it that was inside the glove and now all over my 10-year-old’s hand was… could it possibly be?… the remnants of a little league baseball diamond from three decades ago?

I stood in the backyard that was a little bigger than the one I played my first baseball game in. It also has a screened porch that is kind of in the way but we managed. I plucked baseballs out of the old catcher’s mitt I’d found in the attic alongside my glove and tossed the balls one at a time to my son and his friend. I gave them a few pointers on how to wind up for a throw and how to position the glove to catch.

I had barely thought about baseball in at least twenty years but it was like I hadn’t missed a beat. I could still hear the voice of another coach, the all-star coach I played for my very last season when I was twelve, derisively asking me “Are you going to swing???” after I let several completely inaccurate and wild pitches pass by at batting practice. I got quietly angry and indignant as I tended to do back then (and probably still do now if I’m being honest) and lashed at the next several pitches, lacing line drives through the infield. I never had any power at the plate, but I could make consistent contact. Particularly after someone insulted me. The coach changed his tune immediately. He had me bat leadoff in the tournament. I got zero hits and walked or was hit by a pitch probably close to ten times. (“Are you going to swing?” Nope!)

The ball floated back and forth from my hand to the boys’ gloves to the ground (so much time on the ground) and back to my glove in that steady, languorous way anyone who has ever played baseball knows so well. While we were pitching and catching, I thought out loud about how the orange clay from the infield where I played my last baseball games and countless games before that some thirty-plus years ago still lingered in my old glove. The boys were like “Huh, ok, cool, I guess?” but I couldn’t get over it.

Pieces of ourselves are hiding in the most unexpected places.

I don’t know exactly why the old orange dirt struck such a chord instead of the glove itself. Maybe it’s the connection to the earth. Something bigger and more unknowable. Maybe it’s just that the idea of something natural and so elemental being transported through years, decades, and generations is just really appealing for no obvious reason at all.

Kind of like the things we love most. The little things we obsess over. The bonds and the passions we create and break and build again. Year after year, decade after decade, until we build a life that means something. Hopefully?

Baseball might’ve been one of the first things I lost interest in, but at this point, that list is getting pretty lengthy. It sometimes feels like I add a new item every day. For example, I’m not sure if chores count, exactly, but I remember that I used to derive some pleasure from cooking and preparing meals and now I barely tolerate it. I’m adding it to the list.

Being an adult means continually being worn down, rubbed away, eroded like a stone beneath a waterfall. It can be tough to remember that the little kid who was madly in love with baseball still exists. But just like the orange dirt inside an old glove, that kid lingers. He can hide away for years, decades even, but he’s never truly gone.

It’s so easy to forget. Even when I have little mini versions of myself right in front of my eyes every day who are obsessed with basketball or video games or movies or dolls or anything seemingly simple and inconsequential that I can’t always seem to muster the energy to care about.

But sometimes all it takes to rediscover that spark is the opportunity to breathe in the past if only for a few minutes. To consume it. Let it become physically part of you again. Not like, in a weird way. I didn’t lick the glove or sniff it up close glue-huffing style or anything like that, but I’m sure you understand how particulate spread works. And how remembering works.

It’s more subtle. Like a third base coach tugging his earlobe and then tapping his belt.