What is the best baseball-related gift you ever gave or received?

I didn’t like baseball until I was ten years old, and it was from then on that I REALLY liked baseball. I asked my dad to play Little League and when no one picked me in tryouts he started his own team full of leftover players. We won exactly one game, dropping fifteen other contests - the Detroit Lions of the league if you will - but it was one of my most fun summers ever. Because our team was not super talented, and my dad was the coach, I got to play lots of key positions.

We didn’t have a catcher, so my dad told me to get the gear on, I was going to catch. Honestly, I was thrilled. I thought it was so cool catchers got to wear special equipment - the “tools of ignorance” seemed like “tools of awesomeness” to me. They even got their own glove! I wanted one, I wanted to be a real catcher.

I was never a kid that really longed for gifts - my mom once remarked it was weird that we would pass by Toys ‘R Us and I would never ask for anything. But I wanted that glove.

I was probably 11 years old that year, and had long already exposed the Santa conspiracy (it gets “marginal” by age 7). But I must have been good that year, because under the tree Christmas morning sat a Lance Parrish catcher’s glove.

It was also that year that I really started getting baseball cards. I guess if you know a relative likes baseball, cards are an easy gift to get. I was still at the ground level in terms of my collection, but I got a big infusion of cards that Christmas, with one relative giving me an entire box of 1988 Score baseball cards. I still have most of those cards today and am waiting to see if my dozen Pat Sheridan cards will increase in value.

You are all baseball fans, you must have received a cool baseball gift over the years. Or maybe you gave a particularly cool gift to another baseball fan? What is the best baseball-related gift you remember?