AVA, Mo. — When Bob Clevenhagen sits down to watch a baseball game, he pays more attention to players' gloves than to the score.
He'll know right away if the New York Yankees' Derek Jeter or the St. Louis Cardinals' Ray Lankford is in a game simply by looking at the model of gloves and color of laces. (Blue for Jeter. Red for Lankford).
From the cheap seats he could pick out the little pieces of plastic Mark McGwire has sewn into his first baseman's mitt to give it extra strength. And with one glance at the TV, he could tell whether the Milwaukee Brewers' Marquis Grissom has finally traded in that old workhorse he's been wearing for years in favor of a new model.
Clevenhagen designed all those gloves for all those players.
"I've been doing this for 22 years," he says, showing visitors around his office at the Rawlings Sporting Goods plant in this Ozarks town of 3,000.
With cow pastures spreading out on all sides of Ava, this is the image of small-town Americana, a place where baseball gloves ought to be made.
And here they are made, hundreds each day. Most of them are top-of-the-line models that sell for $150 or more in stores around the country, plant manager Don Walker says.
The plant also produces brightly colored protective helmets for batters and catchers, turns out equipment for other sports, and stamps commemorative baseballs, basketballs and other memorabilia. And it tests major league baseballs for quality and consistency.
But it is in Clevenhagen's office, just off the main glove production floor, where some of the crown jewels of baseball are produced. There, he meticulously designs the gloves that go on the hands of about half of the nation's major leaguers.
They are gloves that come with names like Ken Griffey Jr., Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn (who also wants lightning bolts on his) burned into the leather.
"I like them all," he says with a smile, declining to name a favorite player. "They're all pretty nice guys, really."
Around the plant in general, however, it's clear that McGwire, the Cardinals' big first baseman, is a huge hero in this town some 170 miles southwest of St. Louis.
When McGwire shattered Roger Maris' record last year with 70 homers, it was the talk of the plant for months.
"I made him his first glove in '84," Clevenhagen recalls. "When he was going to the Olympics. He was the backup for Will Clark."
