Zeeble: Small Texas town is home to one of the last U.S. baseball glove factories
From Bill Zeeble at NPR’s All Things Considered on March 18, 2019:
About 100 miles northwest of Dallas-Fort Worth, past pastures of crops and cattle, sits Nocona, Texas, population 3,000, home to the Nokona baseball glove factory, one of the only baseball glove factories left in the United States.
Inside, there are stacks of tanned and dyed kangaroo, buffalo and calfskins piled at one end of the 20,000-square-foot one-story shop. “We literally bring leather in through one door and magically, ball gloves come out the door at the very end,” says Rob Storey, Nokona’s executive vice president.
“That, and about 45 labor operations, and you’ve got a ball glove.”
Storey should know — this is the family business. To survive the depression, his grandfather, Bob Storey, added baseball gloves to the family’s line of leather goods in 1934. Since then, just about every U.S. competitor has moved production overseas.
Read the full article here: https://www.npr.org/2019/03/18/704503206/a-small-town-in-texas-is-home-to-one-of-the-last-baseball-glove-factories-in-the
Originally published: March 20, 2019. Last Updated: March 20, 2019.