Youth Baseball Glove for 10yr Old New to Baseball - Advice Request

R9 is a good glove that will last a couple seasons. I wouldn’t buy a full leather glove for him yet because it’ll take a while to break in and he won’t enjoy it right away. Wilson A500 is another good starter glove. There’s black friday deals on gloves everywhere right now

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sta4ever

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I played baseball since I was 4 and has scholarships to UF & UGA for pitching, but basically wrecked my shoulder due to literal medical malpractice in high school. I used the same A2000 Greg Maddix was using. I have two A2000s, the one I pitched with, but that's a little too big/tight for my kid & the one I used as an infielder, but that's in pretty rough shape. I'm trying to deliberately pre-empt myself from going full crazy travel ball parent mode & thinking he's going to be just like me and I've gotta buy him a $2-300 Wilson as his first glove.

I definitely want to get him something nice, but he doesn't need top of the line gear just yet. Good suggestion, though.

ETA: Do you guys think 11.5" is the sweet spot, won't be too big for him but also not too small either? I thought about going 11.25", but I think he can handle an 11.5" as long as it's not super heavy and that would be a better size as he grows into it.

Is he going to play travel ball in the spring or just rec? If he’s only going to play 10-15 rec games I’d go with something like an A500. Very easy break in, will hold up for a year. If you plan on putting him on a travel team that will play more I’d go with the R9 or A1000. If he really takes to it, you can always upgrade to the higher end leather gloves that would last him through high school when he’s 12 or 13. His hands will have grown by then too

Okay, so I was considering starting a separate thread on OT for this, and may still do that, but he's currently 9 and up to this point I've hung out with he and his mom, who is one of my best friends, numerous times, but always as a friend. So...I just learned back on Nov 12th that he's actually my son. I'll save the details of that fun little curveball of a story for a separate thread.

So right now, he's grown up solely with his mom. She wants to tell him I'm his dad and wants me to be a part of his life, which I obviously want to do as well. But we're taking things gradually and trying to focus on approaching this and doing what's in his best interest always.

For right now I just know that he likes to play catch, but doesn't have his own glove. So for now all I know/can plan for is playing catch being a hobby to build my relationship with my son. We may try putting him in baseball for the upcoming season. But for now it's playing catch.

So, even my initial $150 might be overdoing it a bit. I've been asking numerous LLM AI models for suggestions and the Wilson A950 was mentioned as being great quality, comparable to the R9, but also softer and easier on the hand which might be a good thing for my son who's very new to baseball. But maybe even that's more than I need right now. I probably need to go to some stores and try on different gloves. I'd take him and have him pick something out, but I want this to be a surprise for him. And if it's not a good fit we can always take it back and he can pick something out then.

Apologies everyone for the lone reply. Appreciate all of the suggestions. Up until Nov 11th I had no family of my own...now I have a son. I want to do my absolute best for him in everything I do.

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he's currently 9 and up to this point I've hung out with he and his mom, who is one of my best friends, numerous times, but always as a friend. So...I just learned back on Nov 12th that he's actually my son. I'll save the details of that fun little curveball of a story for a separate thread.

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We can discuss this now. I've got time.

So y'all are just friends, but you obviously hit it 10 years ago. She gets pregnant and delivers 9 months later and you had no suspicion he could have been yours?

Were you in relationship with a another woman at the time?

Rawlings Pro Lite
Great beginners glove

Rawlings R9 Contour Fit
It's all about the colors these days too.

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I just learned back on Nov 12th that he's actually my son.

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I reckon you owe the chap a nice glove....at least.

Also, this is definitely the right board to discuss this life event. A lot kinder and more understanding souls on the OB.

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How old is he?

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He's 9. He'll be 10 on January 30th.

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We can discuss this now. I've got time.

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So y'all are just friends, but you obviously hit it 10 years ago. She gets pregnant and delivers 9 months later and you had no suspicion he could have been yours?

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So, I actually did wonder from time to time over the years. But she always said that she knew the father was this other guy. So back in October we're just chatting as usual and she finds a way to work in asking for pics of me as a kid. So I sent her some. And later on she tells me, soooo...here's the reason I asked you for pics of you as a kid.

Basically, a few things had started making her wonder. First, her mom's white but her dad is Syrian (Christian, though) but both she and her sister, and I guess most people in their family, have very dark hair. And Atlas, she's a bookworm/your hot librarian girl, haha, but I actually really like his name too, anyway, he started out with very light brown hair. I have very light brown hair now, but I was a complete blonde basically up to 12-13 or so. So that made her wonder. But she also said his looks in general, she's like, "He doesn't look like the guy I thought was his father."

And then she said, he's always coming up to me with these existential or deeply philosophical questions, he makes straight As, he's reading Neil Gaiman novels at 9...and so, as a kid who was in the Gifted program growing up and went to Gifted in elementary & a specialized Gifted program at a Magnet middle school which then led to me doing the IB Program at what was the #1 High School in the country for years and years, including my time there, I'm like...yeaahhh...kinda sounds like me. He also looks very similar to me and has my penchant for sarcasm.

So she told me that she thought I was probably the father. So, I sat with that for a couple of days and then was like, "Okay, I'm figuring this out." So I ordered an at home paternity test off of Amazon where you take cheek swab samples and send them off to a lab. This time it was my turn to surprise her. I asked her if she could meet me on a Monday afternoon as I had something to give her. So we meet up and I'm like, "Surprise! Here's a paternity kit with my samples already included. Get it done!"

And so yeah, we sent that off and I got the results and it's 99.9999% probable that I'm his father.

So, and this could be its own separate thread too, but I've struggled with treatment-resistant depression & Complex PTSD going back to when I was 11. So throughout my 20s I would "date" but never got into a relationship. I was genuinely living a nightmare, one that almost killed me. I ended up putting a 45ACP Hollow-Point through my chest back on July 22, 2017. Luckily I lived like 10mins from Shands here in Jax. It's UF's hospital and also acts as the official trauma center for all of North, Central FL & Southern GA. The bullet blew out my transverse colon, hit my liver, pancreas, spine, and missed my abdominal aorta by 1cm before exiting my lower back. When I looked down after it happened I noticed my intestines spilling out, so I had to push them back in. I experienced 40% Blood Volume loss by the time I got to the hospital. Had 2 15+ hour surgeries that weekend, then spent over a week in the ICU, and another month in the Surgery wing. Somehow, well actually God saved me, I know that, I survived...even the doctors were like, we have no idea how you even made it to the hospital alive.

Sorry, going on tangents I know. But no, my depression basically robbed me of the last 20yrs of my life so I never found someone that I could make things work with romantically. Hell, I was still struggingly with intense despair & suicidal ideation all of this year until Aug 29th, which again, could merit its own thread, but Christ found me & brought me back home & I returned to my faith. Ever since then, for the first time in 20 years, I've been doing legitimately well. Still struggle, but it's manageble, I don't wake up each morning feeling like my chest is drowning and my head is on fire. God has genuinely performed several miracles in my life, from delivering me back in August, to keeping me alive throughout my mid 20s when, if I told you about that time, you'd understand that there is no possible way I should have made it out alive. But I did.

Again, sorry for that long arse tangent, short answer is no I wasn't with anyone officially at the time. lol

This is Atlas:

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F the glove, you have 9 years of back child support to worry about Baw.

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Haha, fortunately she's not doing that to me. But obviously I'm going to help support him moving forward & I'm already looking into college funds & stuff to set up for him.

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Pics??

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Just added a few.