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Usually the rep from Adidas will send me back positive information from the guys. When I did James Shields’ glove (the rep) sent me back a text telling me that Shields really loved the glove, and showed me exactly what he said — that was pretty cool. – Braden Yardley
CEDAR CITY — In an upstairs room of his Cedar City home, Braden Yardley has hung a list of baseball players.
Carlos Martinez, James Shields and Dellin Betances are just a few of the Major League Baseball players' names that appear the list. These players aren’t necessarily Yardley’s favorites, but he does keep a close eye on them — and especially their gloves. Because, well, he fixed them.
Yardley is the owner of Reglove — a baseball glove repair company that has caught the attention of major glove manufacturers Adidas and Marucci. So when a ball player breaks his glove and sends it back to one of those companies, that glove ends up in southern Utah, in the Yardley's hands.
Reglove can be traced back to Yardley’s playing days at SUU. During his senior season, the finger laces of his glove broke. After it happened, he simply went out and purchased a new glove, but there was a problem.
“I just didn’t like it,” Yardley said. “I wanted my old glove back.”
So he went out and learned how to fix his old friend. Before long he was fixing gloves for his teammates, and then later for local youth players he coached. In the fall of 2013, he officially began Reglove.
Things moved pretty quickly from there.
“I started posting glove work that I had done on Instagram and a guy from Adidas saw it and he contacted me and said that he had a few gloves that he would like to me to do,” Yardley said.
Adidas shipped the gloves out to him, he relaced them and sent them back. Adidas liked it saw. Adidas wasn’t the only glove manufacturer impressed by Yardley’s work. This past spring, Marucci also reached out to Yardley for his help in fixing and customizing gloves.
He has now done glove work now for over 20 players on 15 MLB teams, and now he is starting to do some work for celebrities.
On Monday evening, ESPN will air the Celebrity Softball Game as part of All-Star weekend (the game was played on Sunday), and Yardley will be paying close attention to one player: Snoop Dogg.
Yardley customized the popular rapper's glove with Dodger blue lace for the game.
“I haven’t heard anything, but I guess if we see him using it on the field, that means he liked it,” Yardley said.
There is little to no interaction between the players and Yardley. He often is just told by the manufacturers rep to use the colors of the team (red and blue lace is the most common), but when a player really likes what he has done, Yardley hears about it.
“Usually the rep from Adidas will send me back positive information from the guys,” Yardley said. “When I did James Shields' glove (the rep) sent me back a text telling me that Shields really loved the glove, and showed me exactly what he said — that was pretty cool.”
When he did Ranger center fielder Delino Deshields Jr., he was told to do whatever he wanted to. He used a red and blue colored lace, and the final product ended up being “one of the coolest gloves I’ve done.”
His thoughts were confirmed when What Pros Wear, featured the glove on its Instagram account.
“That’s pretty cool,” Yardley said of seeing his glove on the Instagram post. “I didn’t get any credit for it, but I put the colors in it, and it’s just awesome to see him using it.”
Yardley’s idea of recycling glove was shared by another resident of the greater St. George area.
In 2012, K.J. Harrison — a junior on the Snow Canyon Class 3A championship baseball team — drowned just a few weeks removed from the championship game. This past fall, Yardley had a chance to visit with K.J.’s father Kreg and found out that Kreg and K.J. planned on starting their own glove relacing business.
Kreg gave Yardley a box of the gloves K.J. had worked on, and Yardley added that to a collection of gloves that he had compiled for underprivileged players.
Each of these gloves is now marked with K.J.’s name and his number, six. Yardley is collecting donated baseball equipment to be a part of the KJ6 Initiative. It's an initiative that supplies kids with not just equipment, but a chance to play the game as well.
And even as the list of players in his home continues to grow, he admits that his favorite part of it all is providing kids with that opportunity.