The Man Behind The Glove (Work)
In this day and age it can be hard to tell if you’re doing business with a real, living, breathing, feeling, human being. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with AI and I’m not saying robots aren’t useful. But, if you’re like me, I’m sure you want to trust your glove care to someone, not something. I’m here to show you in the coming paragraphs that, not only am I someone, I am one who has put on a glove a few (thousand) times.
You’ve seen it in the by line or you may have known me for years (thanks for reading this anyway), but my name is John Walker, II. If that suffix looks familiar it’s because it is the impetus for the II Sticks Glove Works name and logo. Named after my father who didn’t want me to have the nickname “Junior”, my birth certificate was adorned with the appropriate Roman numeral.
I grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, just a couple long tosses of the rawhide from Washington, D.C. You would think that a boy who grew up to start a glove work business was a baseball player from the start. And you’d be right, except for an early blip on my sports timeline that had me in skates and pads and holding a stick on the ice. With the rising costs of youth hockey coupled with my dad’s resurgent love for playing baseball, America’s pastime soon took over our house.
The memory banks are filled to the brim with such fond reminders of youth baseball. A few that come to mind:
Playing for my dad
playing with my best friend, Shane, every season (did someone say Dream Team?)
hitting my first homerun
celebrating as my little brother, Matt, hit his first homerun (back-to-back with Shane, no less),
8 year-old me and teammates trying to dump a water cooler on my dad after winning a championship
These and more all kindled a love for the game. That love allowed me to develop my skills enough to play into the higher levels of ball.
Baseball took me up and down the Eastern Seaboard and beyond through AAU, or travel, baseball in my middle and high school years. I enjoyed four years of baseball with great friends and teammates at West Potomac High School, manning the shortstop position and dabbling on the mound each season. The dabbling eventually turned into a full time position on the bump at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.
Looking back on it, I feel I took for granted the chance to hold a roster spot on a college baseball team. I realized after it was over that very few baseball players are lucky enough to toe the rubber or dig into the batter’s box at such a level. I enjoyed a wonderful career, one in which I led the team in appearances as a freshman, got scouted by the Arizona Diamondbacks as a sophomore, was named a captain as a junior, and finished my career with a school record (fewest walks allowed per 9 innings pitched). Now, I also gave up more than my fair share of homeruns (I was a classic “pitch-to-contact” guy. Sometimes that contact was hard contact).
Outside of the stats, good and bad, my time at Longwood produced the most significant relationship of my life. I met Amanda shortly after school started in the Fall of 2005 as we were both studying athletic training. She was a class ahead of me in the program, but our paths crossed, thankfully, more than enough to get acquainted. That Spring, my first season of ball, she was the athletic training student assigned to work with the baseball team. And, the rest, as they say, is history.
We started dating that Summer. I dropped to a knee three years later. She said yes and we got married in 2010. In the nearly two decades we’ve known each other and the last 15 as husband and wife, she’s been my rock. Our love has created a wonderful family of four. We have two kids, Avery and Evan, who are beautiful (like their mama), fun-loving, smart, kind, and athletic.
We currently live in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I worked as an athletic trainer in the high school setting and separately in an orthopedic surgeon’s office until 2023. At that time, I stepped away from the workforce to be a full-time stay-at-home dad. This decision allowed me to start II Sticks Glove Works, too. Now, I am a homeschool teacher to Avery and Evan. I love the time I get to spend with them imparting knowledge and watching them grow and learn. Baseball still rules in the Walker home. Amanda and I help run our local Cal Ripken youth baseball league that both kids play in. I still play in a local recreation league and travel with a tournament team a few times a year. As any ballplayer knows, it’s hard to hang up the cleats.
I am a follower of Jesus, a devoted husband, and a loving father. I’m also a son of two wonderful parents and a big brother to one heck of a husband and father (it runs in the family, what can I say?). I have a passion for baseball and my life’s course has allowed me to share that passion through the care of baseball and softball gloves. My hope is that after reading this, you will trust me to care for and work on your glove as if it were my own. Thank you in advance for doing so.
With glove,
