A Taste of Leather

-not your typical home cooked meal

I proudly announce that my son joined Little League baseball this year. While he has been on a swim team for years, baseball is the first dry land sport he has shown any real interest in. The news that he wanted to be on a baseball team came as a complete surprise and we were left with little time to prepare him. He didn't even own a glove. My wife bought him a brand spanking new baseball glove only a month before the season started. I admit to having trouble breaking in that glove despite routine spankings. Fault being the new equipment, every other baseball would pop out of my son's glove during a routine catch.

I needed to break that glove in before he became frustrated. I abused the glove trying to domesticate it. I tried everything from following the urban legend of rubbing shaving cream on it, hitting it with a sledgehammer, dipping it in vegetable oil, and storing it under a mattress. Growing anxious my son asked me to sleep with the glove.

"Put it under your mattress because you're much heavier." he instructed with good intention.

I can take a hint. So I weighted in on the matter. Two hundred thirty pounds of top-notch slumbers did not work either.

I bought a product called Hot Glove treatment, which required preheating a conventional oven to 300 degrees. Anything as goofy as this couldn't possibly work but I was running out of time and options. Now I haven't played organized baseball in thirty years but I never anticipated cooking a glove in my lifetime no matter how long I stayed away from the game. Holy cow what a half-baked idea! This product had to be a gimmick that ends with firemen at your front door.

Nevertheless, my son lathered up the obstinate glove like a professional glazer. I cooked it in the oven on a cookie sheet. Four minutes later, I heard the timer sound. Presto-Change-O. I used an oven mitt to remove the scalding hot baseball mitt from the oven. It even smelled good. I poked it with a spatula while it cooled to room temperature. I checked the product's directions and thankfully there were no plans for a bunt cake for dessert. I returned alongside the former cow of a glove. It felt velvety soft. My son tried it on and he could snap it shut for the first time. The Hot Glove treatment was a miracle second only to the 1969 Mets.

So the next time I get served a steak hard as shoe leather in an upscale restaurant, I'm spraying this miracle whip on it and sending it back to the kitchen until it comes out a moist tenderloin. Sometimes you just got to raise the steaks in life.