How a reporter returned borrowed glove to childhood friend's children

I stood in the sporting goods store staring at rows and rows of baseball gloves giving anything not to be there because it would mean my friend wasn’t dead.

John Le was my buddy from Blessed Sacrament School. Between fifth grade and eighth grade, we bonded over sports. It was always about sports with him. He loved basketball and could run the point guard position with quickness and efficiency. I envied his smooth fielding skills in baseball. When it came to ruing the mile during physical education, he was always fastest.

We shared a year at Mater Dei High School where I was inexplicably placed in the same advanced placement Algebra class with him. Panicked, because I had no business being in advanced placement anything, he assured me I’d be fine.

He always said things would be fine. Don’t worry, he’d say after a missed shot or a fielding error. Even nine years after we lost touch and recoected at Cal State Fullerton, he hadn’t changed a bit. So, when we played on the same slow-pitch softball team in 1991 and I lost my glove, he told me not to worry and let me borrow his.

He never saw that glove - or me - again.

Glove borrowed

Le came to the United States the day before Saigon fell in 1975 with his parents. His father, who was a teacher in Vietnam, settled them in San Diego for three years until they moved to Orange County. By then, he was 11 and he knew more than I did about the Dodgers, Angels and Lakers. Along with a circle of friends, it was all sports, all the time.

But there was something deeper about Le, too. I leaed through the years he never drank, didn’t smoke and remained physically active. When he tracked me down at Cal State Fullerton by reading my Top 10 lists in The Daily Titan, we would meet for breakfast at the student union and talk about deeper things. He had left Mater Dei High School to go to seminary school. He was studying psychology at Cal State Fullerton. Le was a good listener and a good audience for a guy who had hoped to one day use Top 10 lists as clips to get a job writing for David Letterman. He made me feel fuier than I really was.

On our softball team, he played second base and I played shortstop using his glove. Over the course of the season, I got comfortable with it. At first it seemed huge to me - ironic given Le’s slight frame and stature and how, on his hand, it looked like a jai alai glove. Brett Butler would’ve been proud.

After the season, we lost touch again as he headed south and I eventually ended up in Ventura County, then Denver. He never asked for the glove back and I kept using it as I played on so many horrible - and a few decent - slow pitch softball leagues. The glove never let me down and probably made me a better fielder than I really was, too. It was with me when I broke my collarbone laying out for a flare in right field. When I made diving stops in Denver. On cold days in Salt Lake City when the ball stung popping into the well-wo pocket. When I played catch with my son for the first time.

Advertisement

It became part of my life. And whenever I used it, I thought of John.

Glove retued

Le was 48 when he died in Irvine two days after Christmas. He had lung cancer. I heard he was sick and I thought I should go see him. I thought I’d bring the glove back to him. After all, there’s no statute of limitations on retuing something, I figured.

But I didn’t get the chance to see him. He died and I saw the flood of remembrances on his Facebook page. I saw he was married and had three sons - two teenagers Ethan and Nathan - and Damien, who was barely four months old.

At the funeral, I hugged his brother Patrick. Later, I asked his sisters Elizabeth Le Young and Cecile Le Wright if I might retu the glove to his sons. I felt nobody should have their father’s baseball glove other than his children or family.

She arranged for me to meet the family at the house in Westminster. I nervously sat across the table from Nathan and Ethan, noticing the resemblances to my friend. I told them my memories of their dad. I took the glove out and slid it slowly across the table and told them about how their father had been with me all these years but it was time for it to come home. Le’s mother, who had never picked up a baseball glove in her life before, held it close to her chest and cried.

Then they placed the glove on a mantle by a picture of him. I hugged the family and, as I drove home, I thought about how much I’d missed out. I thought about my son and how I needed to buy a new glove so I could keep playing catch with him.

I had no idea how to even shop for a new glove because my friend had given me one that would always be the one that fit best. I dreaded trying to replace the irreplaceable.

I guess I just miss my friend.