PORT ANGELES — All his life, KC Mack has been collecting vintage baseball gloves. He calls it a “lifelong obsession.”
His oldest gloves come from the 1910s, made out of horsehide with Bill Doak’s name on them. Doak was a pitcher who played from 1912 to 1929, mostly with the St. Louis Cardinals.
Mack has a work shed behind his Port Angeles home that is filled with antique gloves, piled into various stacks. He estimates at the moment that he has roughly 500 gloves stacked up around the shed, ranging in color from deep burgundy to jet black. There’s no bright red or blue gloves like some players wear today.
“I love vintage gloves. I have three piles going on now. It’s kind of crazy,” he said.
Mack, who played baseball for Port Angeles Lefties owner/coach Matt Acker at Green River Community College and at Whitworth University, decided to put his life’s passion into a business called Mack Provisions, and it’s turned into an 80-hour-a-week profession, toiling away in his work shed, cutting the leather and hand-stitching it.
“I wish it was less. But, this is a one-person show. I do everything — make the wallets, take photos, run the social media.”
But, he does love having his own business doing something he loves, working with things that he loves.
“It’s so nice to be my own boss,” he said.
Mack turns the beaten, old, mostly cowhide leather from these decades-old gloves into high-quality wallets. One he is working on this week is being made from 1930s leather with Joe Gordon’s name featured on the wallet. Joe Gordon is a Hall of Fame second baseman who played for the New York Yankees.
Mack’s unique business has gotten him featured on KOMO TV and television stations in Alaska.
Mack estimates he makes and ships about 90 wallets a month.
On his site, he advertises wallets and other products that have Johnny Bench or Yogi Berra’s names on them. Customers first go to his website, and Mack sends them a gallery of gloves to choose from. Perhaps they find a glove with their favorite player’s name on it or a color they like. Then they place an order.
His site advertises: “All gloves have natural patina from use on the diamond and were originally manufactured in America. The spirit of Mack Provisions is to honor American nostalgia and the celebration of the national pastime.”
He said the leather from this antique gloves is of a much higher quality than baseball gloves today.
“Their sourcing is really bad leather,” he said. He gets many of the gloves from dealers who collect and sell antique gloves.
“It’s a weird niche thing. I got a dozen gloves from Connecticut and half a dozen from Tennessee,” he said.
Most of these gloves are vastly smaller than the gloves made today, with tiny baskets for the ball. Some of them are so small they only have three fingers. For wallet-making, Mack likes catcher’s mitts and first-basemen’s gloves. “Those make the best wallets. They have so much more leather,” he said.
To check out Mack’s business and items for sale, people can go to www.mackprovisions.com.
KC Mack works on a Joe Gordon wallet in his Port Angeles workshop. (Pierre LaBossiere/Peninsula Daily News)
