MISSING PARTS AND WHERE TO FIND REPLACEMENTS

When I was a kid I had a high school aged uncle who liked to build model cars with missing parts. He didn’t play any sports.

I glued model cars together, too. The box of plastic pieces all linked together became a Buick Wildcat.

No paint, nothing special, just following directions and putting it together.

If I had missing parts, no problem. Something would always fit.

My uncle took a different approach. He made custom cars.

I was around ten years old watching him go after model car pieces with a small knife. He’d shave and slice, chop and channel, until his creations looked car show ready.

The custom models he built and painted didn’t end up on his shelf. He entered them in contests. And won. Later, he applied his skills to real cars and did restorations on classic BMWs. There’s no such thing as missing parts on a road-worthy car he brought back to life.

My models had a different story. We’d heat them up in the oven and crash them to make realistic accidents. My dad the insurance adjuster saw my crashed Buick Wildcat model and gave an estimate for repairs.

That was the closest I’ve ever been to classic Detroit steel, outside a few cruises in a ’65 Riviera. Hey, J-Ray.

A Baseball Glove’s Missing Parts

After too much time indoors reading comics and playing with crashed model cars, my parents decided I had missing parts.

They thought I might find them playing Little League Baseball. This was a big deal because my dad had a treasured mitt from his playing days he wanted to hand down. A Wilson A2000.

I found it one day and pounded my fist into the pocket. No one had a mitt like his. With this special glove I’d be a star. I dropped into my stance, pounded the glove, said, “Hey batta, batta, batta, swing batta.” Then I set the glove down instead of putting it away.

I never got that baseball glove. Somehow the dog jumped up, got the glove, and chewed it to pieces, with several missing parts. I was in trouble, and knew what kind.

Us kids once found my dad’s set of arrows, but no bow, which probably saved a life. We took the arrows out and used them as spears. When we finished, they were a mess. You could see the disappointment in my dad’s face.

He had kids who tore things up. And now a dog joined the gang. The dog had a short residency after the glove incident.

He ran away. At least that was the story then. Later, after I had a wife and kids of my own, I called my mom on Mother’s Day instead of visiting. My dog wasn’t feeling well and that led to other dog-talk.

“Do you know what happened to the dog after it chewed up your father’s baseball mitt?” Mom said.

“It ran away?”

“Your father took it out and shot it,” she said.

My parents had divorced by then, and like good parents, they wanted control. Over what, I still don’t know.

“Really? Took it out and shot the dog,” I said.

“What do you think of that?” Mom asked.

“I remember he was pretty upset, so it was either me, or the dog. That’s how I feel,” I said.

“You know what happened to the cat?” she said.

“It ran away?”

“No.”

Finding Missing Parts

After the Major League Baseball strike of 1994 I decided to draw the line.

My wife and I had two young sons to raise and we were determined to do it the right way.

The Christmas after the baseball strike, Santa brought two baseball gloves. Hers was a nice infielder’s glove.

Mine was a Wilson A2000.

My wife was surprised, if not delighted.

“Why?” she asked.

“You have to ask Santa,” I said.

“What would you guess Santa would say?”

“Maybe he’d say he was seeding the ground for two little boys to grow up with baseball mitts and dream of the big leagues,” I said.

“So he gave them to us?”

“We’ll have a catch and break them in for them.”

Little boys grow into men, and they did. But baseball wasn’t part of the life.

One played a summer league season, the other a T-ball season. That was it for baseball, but between the two of them they played football, basketball, soccer, indoor soccer, water polo, tennis, and wrestling.

Both are now in their thirties, and the two Wilson mitts are not broken in yet.

I have a feeling that might change when they start looking for missing parts.