It always begins with the glove. One day in early March, you retrieve it from

hibernation in the back of the closet. Carefully, lovingly, you place your hand inside and

stretch your fingers and thumb, feeling the stiffened old leather reshape itself into a soft,

supple fielding instrument.

You throw on a tattered sweatshirt and walk out back with your son to play catch in the

lingering, late-winter cold. You limber up and feel the tug of advancing age in your throwing

shoulder. You follow the ball into the pocket, waiting for that resonant pop, the one that

tells you baseball season is right around the corner.

Bats come and go. They shatter and you get a new one. A glove is more lasting and

permanent. Your first glove is like your first love, a companion to your innocence. Your

father rubbed it down with oil. You put a new baseball inside and tied it up with string,

maybe placed it under pillow and waited for a perfect pocket to form.

Your baseball glove was part of you, a summer appendage hanging off the handlebars as you

pedaled off to the nearest pickup game. You'd leave it on the field between innings for the

kid who forget to bring his. You bolted in horror when you realized you had left it outside in

the rain.

Every ballplayer has fond memories of his glove. This is how Stefan Fatsis recalled his 31-

year-old Rawlings in "My Glove, a Biography", an essay from his anthology of baseball stories:

"It even smells beautiful. It's the smell of leather, dirt, grass, saliva, sun, spring,

childhood, summer, hope, skill, anticipation, achievement, fulfillment, memory, love, joy."

Baseball glorifies the home run. Any list of the game's most famous moments begins with

homers: Bill Mazeroski, Bobby Thomson, Babe Ruth calling his shot. The goats are the men who

fail with the glove. More people know about Bill Buckner's error than Willie Mays' amazing

catch and throw on Vic Wertz.

Deep down, we know that fielding matters. It wins games. It's the Silver Slugger, but the

Gold Glove. From Tris Speaker to Marty Marion, to Joe DiMaggio, Roberto Clemente and

Willie Mays, to Brooks Robinson and Ozzie Smith, we've seen how great defensive players and

championship teams go hand-in-glove.

But in recent years, defense tended to get overlooked and undervalued. In the steroid era

and beyond, teams and their followers swooned over the long ball and became infatuated with

previously unrecognized stats as on-base and slugging percentage.

Pitchers still got the big bucks, but defense was an afterthought. It was hard to quantify

defense and besides, teams had only so much money to spend in an increasingly competitive

marketplace. Then, at about the time that baseball began to come clean on the use of

performance-enhancing drugs, the sport renewed its glove obsession.

Baseball's new breed of executives has all sorts of statistics to guide them. There are

stats for Defensive Efficiency, Ultimate Zone Rating, defensive Plus/Minus and Probabilistic

Mode of Range. The Fielding Bible gathers the observations of hundreds of scouts who watch

games to determine which defensive players do the best job of saving runs for their team.

Nowadays, baseball executives talk about "market inefficiencies." Ballplayers are

commodities, and if you want to maximize your investment, you need to take advantage of your

rivals' tendency to overrate certain skills at the expense of others. The Yankees have a $200

million payroll. If you want to keep up, you need to spend wisely — and

unconventionally.

Theo Epstein, the Red Sox GM, has believed from the start that preventing a run is as

important as scoring one. It seems simple enough. Epstein is a big proponent of baseball

analysis. When he became Boston's GM in 2003, he concluded something every lucid Sox fan had

known for years: The Sox were good at scoring runs, but never seemed very capable at

preventing them.

So at the trade deadline in 2004, Epstein made a shocking deal: He traded Nomar

Garciaparra, a one-dimensional slugger, and acquired two Gold Glove fielders — shortstop

Orlando Cabrera and first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz. The defense stiffened, the Sox got hot

and won their first World Series in 86 years.

Sports executives are great imitators. The defensive thing caught on. In 2007, Tampa Bay

was last in defensive efficiency (a ratio of outs per ball put into play). Young GM Andrew

Friedman decided that he could make the most of a severely limited payroll by spending money

on run prevention. He traded Delmon Young, a former No. 1 overall draft pick, for pitcher Matt

Garza and shortstop Jason Bartlett.

In '08, the Rays went from last place to the World Series. They scored fewer runs than in

'07, but went from last to first in defensive efficiency. They allowed 273 fewer runs than in

'07, the third-greatest improvement in history. Bartlett, the obscure shortstop, was voted MVP

of his team. Joe Maddon said the Rays could not have won without him.

"It just doesn't happen," Maddon said.

Last year, the Yankees won the World Series after bringing in two top starters, CC Sabathia

and A.J. Burnett. Pitching, of course, is the best defense of all, and it's been reflected in

some of the staggering free-agent signings in recent years. But the Yanks also signed first

baseman Mark Teixeira, one of the best first basemen in the game. That's why Epstein also

pursued him heavily.

The Yanks went from 25th to seventh in defensive efficiency last year. OK, so it's an

esoteric stat. I don't fully understand it. But the last six teams to reach the World Series

were all ranked in the top three in their leagues in efficiency.

Epstein hasn't given up. After the Red Sox were swept by the Angels in the division series

last fall, the Red Sox evaluated their team and again determined that defense was the problem.

They were third in the AL in fielding percentage, a simplistic measurement that doesn't take

range into account. The Sox were 29th in defensive efficiency and 16th in zone rating.

The Sox didn't re-sign Jason Bay, a slugger with limited defensive abilities. They signed

three top defensive players: shortstop Marco Scutaro, third baseman Adrian Beltre and center

fielder Mike Cameron. Cameron and Beltre have won Gold Gloves. Maddon has called Beltre the

best third baseman he's ever seen. The Sox have two other players who have won the award:

second baseman Dustin Pedroia and first baseman Kevin Youkilis.

When Beltre was introduced in Boston, super agent Scott Boras said, "He can really win

games for you defensively."

Seattle can tell you all about it. Beltre was the third baseman on last year's Mariners,

one of the most remarkable teams in history. They were last in the AL in batting average, runs

and on-base percentage. But they won 85 games, increasing their win total by 21 despite

spending $19 million less on payroll.

How did they do it? Pitching and defense. Lots of defense. Jack Zduriencik, the GM,

acquired Franklin Gutierrez from the Indians, put him in center field and watched Gutierrez

chase down everything in sight. Gutierrez and right fielder Ichiro Suzuki are as good a

defensive outfield tandem as the game has seen. According to the Fielding Bible, the M's

defense saved 110 runs last year, far more than any other big-league team.

Zduriencik also picked up veteran Jack Wilson, a terrific shortstop. He lost Beltre in free

agency after the season, but compensated by signing infielder Chone Figgins to a four-year,

$36 million deal. Figgins, who was a top candidate for a Gold Glove at third with the Angels,

is moving to second (Jose Lopez goes to third) to shore up the interior defense.

The Mariners also traded for Cliff Lee, one of the best left-handed starters in baseball.

Lee and Felix Hernandez are a formidable one-two atop the rotation. Pitching in spacious

Safeco Field, behind a great defense, they should be difficult to beat.

If Seattle gets to the postseason, the fascination with defense will continue to grow, as

more and more baseball executives ask themselves if glove really is the answer.