NOCONA — Rob Storey looks into the camera and starts to tell the story.
"I'm fourth generation here," he says. "My great grandfather –”
Then Storey hears the rumble growing louder: A semi-truck is rolling up the road in front of him, its deep roar blaring out any chance of conversation.
"This is where we need 'Smell-a-vision,'" Storey says. "When the cattle truck goes by."
The last place in America where they still make a baseball glove – where steer hides are cut, pressed and stamped, and stitched and laced by hand – sits off Highway 82 in tiny Nocona, Texas, just south of the Red River, and shares a yellow-brick building with a boot shop.
“Sometimes, I think in America people assume stuff spits out of a machine in China somewhere and it ends up on your table or you’re playing on a ballfield with it,” said Storey, the executive vice president of Nokona Ball Gloves, which his family founded in 1934.
“Here, there’s up to 45 different labor operations that go into making one glove.”
While the sporting good giants moved their manufacturing to Asia, Nokona – a slight tweak on the name of its hometown, about 90 minutes northwest of Dallas – stayed here in Texas.
Today, the company has a corporate office in Phoenix, Ariz., but the heart of the company remains in Nocona, where the company crafts gloves in a factory on the east edge of town. The newly renovated building – Nokona moved in last year – features a glossy showroom, a trove of company memorabilia and a giant wall picture of Nolan Ryan, the famed Texas hurler whose first ball glove was a Nokona.
And there’s a reminder, in case anyone should forget, why Nokona stayed in Texas all these years.
Just inside the front door, above a display of the steer and kangaroo hides that are transformed into mitts, is a reference to a quote from Nokona founder Bob Storey, who died in 1980. As American glove manufacturers moved to lower-cost factories in Japan and Korea, Storey, known as “Big Bob,” refused to leave.
“If I have to import gloves and send my employees home,” Storey said, “I’d rather grab a bucket of worms and go fishing.”
Nocona with a 'k'
The first Nokona glove was stitched together in 1934.
By then, Nocona the town -- named after the former Comanche chief, Peta Nocona, and situated about halfway between Gainesville and Wichita Falls – had already built a rich tradition of leather.
Sitting along the heart of the cattle-driving Chisholm Trail, Nocona was home to Justin Boots starting in the 1880s. When Justin moved to Fort Worth, the founder's daughter, Enid Justin, started a boot business of her own: Nocona Boot Company.
It was Storey's great-grandfather, a banker named Cad McCall, who laid the foundation for the ball gloves.
McCall founded Nocona Leather Goods, a purse and wallet manufacturer, in 1926. Four years later, McCall named his son-in-law, Bob Storey, company president. Storey soon moved Nocona Leather into the sporting goods business, and then to ball gloves.
The only hangup -- aside from weathering the Great Depression -- was the name. "Big Bob" wanted to trademark the name "Nocona," but the U.S. Trademark Office denied it, ruling he couldn't trademark a town's name.
So he tweaked the spelling, replacing the "c" with a "k." It's been the same ever since, and the Nokona chief logo, a nod to the hometown's namesake, is still stamped on the gloves.
Not 'cut off a machine'
Nokona accounts for a fraction of the ball glove market. About seven million are made each year -- Nokona produces less than 50,000, Storey said. But Nokona's business is noticeably different from the bigger companies -- household names like Rawlings, Wilson, and Mizuno -- in two ways.
Nokona doesn't sign many players to endorsement deals. Only a handful of Nokona pros are in the majors, such as Pirates pitcher Steven Brault. Dozens of big-leaguers endorse Rawlings, for example, including Bryce Harper and Mike Trout.
Then there's the price. Nokona gloves start in the range of $250 and higher. Their customized gloves cost up to $650. The big brands have their share of pricey gloves, too, but they offer less expensive options.
Nokona's quality, though, is what makes their gloves unique, Storey said.
"It doesn't look like it's been cut off a machine," Storey said. "Each particular glove has a small amount of character to it."
Smaller than most, the sight of a nationally known ball glove company in Nocona, a town of about 3,000, can be surprising to an outsider.
The nearest McDonald's and Walmart are in Bowie, 20 miles to the south. The closest Starbucks is 40 miles away, in Gainesville. Like many small towns across Texas, Nocona has a Dairy Queen and a Sonic and an old water tower.
And Nokona, where last Tuesday the factory floor buzzed with action: A 30-ton press and steel die cut the leather like cookies, sewing machines clicked and clacked, lacers wove long strings of rawhide through freshly stitched gloves.
Rick Vaccaro, 30, maintained his post at the end of the long, bustling line of activity.
Vaccaro, who drilled water wells before catching on as a part-time janitor at Nokona, is a shaper, the guy responsible for the fit and finish of each Nokona glove.
After the gloves are stitched and laced, Vaccaro places each one on a “hot finger,” a 250-degree mount that presses the inside lining with the outside shell. Then he puts the gloves under a pounding machine, holding them open and turning them over, ensuring that every wrinkle is smoothed.
“I never thought about it before I worked here,” he said. “I may have worn a total of about three ball gloves my entire life. After working here for two years, I’ve probably had about 50,000 gloves go on my hand.”
Vaccaro’s work comes at the end of about 3 ½-4 hours worth of labor, Storey said. The Nokona glove that lands on the shelf starts as a thin blanket of leather, often from the hide of a steer.
Nokona gets the leather from factories in Chicago or Milwaukee in the form of a “side,” or a half of the steer, Storey said. Each side is up to 30 square feet and will produce five gloves.
“I’m driving down road,” Storey said, “and I see juicy steaks, hamburgers and about 10 ball gloves standing out in the field.”
The hides are then cut and stamped and stitched and welted, passing from station to station across the Nokona factory floor. Meanwhile, satellite stations work solely on the webbing – I-webs, T-webs, trap-webs, and more – or stitch customized orders.
'It just gets in your blood'
The process starts on the far end of the factory floor, near the racks of hides and the cutting presses.
At the end, after Vaccaro fit and shaped the finished products, Carla Yeargin wheeled a rack of gloves into a large oven, set at about 100 degrees. Yeargin held a timer in her hand, careful not to warm the gloves longer than 10 minutes.
Yeargin started working at Nokona in 2012. But like most everyone in town, she was plenty familiar with the company: She went to kindergarten with Rob Storey, and her son, Josh, had started working at Nokona out of high school.
Like Vaccaro, Yeargin started as a janitor. Now, she heats the gloves and helps with the final inspections, while her son coordinates shipping and receiving. She had worked at various jobs over the years but nowhere quite like Nokona.
“It just gets in your blood,” Yeargin said. “It’s family.”
No one at Nokona might understand that better – maybe except for Storey himself – than Helen Ulbig, who works in the retail showroom at the factory. Ulbig was hired in 1962. In her 56 years at Nokona, she has done a little bit of everything, including secretary work and payroll.
“I had just finished a business school,” Ulbig said, “and Mr. Storey, Robby’s grandfather, called me and said, ‘I hear you’re looking for a job. Why don’t you put your application in?’ So I came over and put my application in, and I’ve been here ever since.”
Ulbig saw the company weather the rise in cheaper, imported gloves from the bigger companies in the 1960s and 70s. She was there when Nokona’s longtime factory caught fire in 2006, putting production on hold for 51 days. And she’s still there today, at the front desk in the new showroom, one of the first people a customer sees when they walk through the door.
“It means a lot to me,” she said. “It’s a good town to live in, the people are friendly, and we all get along good together. We’re just like a family here.”
