CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—It’s the All-American game. And Robert Megerdichian is giving baseball a new lease on life—at least the glove part of it.
Bats are swinging. Balls are being hit out of the park. Runners are stealing bases. Teams are celebrating championships.
But what do you do with a dilapidated mitt that has seen its better days? You could give it the last rites or simply hand it over to this Armenian for repair.
The 60-year-old enjoys a rather obscure hobby: He re-laces, repairs, and reconditions baseball gloves. You’ll find him at www.glovesredone.com.
It’s quite the diversion from his regular job as principal of Robert Megerdichian & Associates where he measures and draws floor plans, converting blueprints to computer-aided designs for landlords and engineers.
By night and weekends, there he is repairing gloves.
It all started quite accidentally a few years ago while watching an adult son Greg play baseball in a men’s league. Megerdichian noticed some of the players using gloves that required attention.
Without any formal training, he started breathing new life into old equipment. On his own, he picked up the art of re-lacing, beginning with old gloves he still had from his softball playing days.
“The best clients are older guys because they have a glove that they love and it’s usually all beaten up,” he says. “But they don’t have the heart to throw it away and are more willing to pay to get it fixed. The younger guys want it done really cheap or they’ll just buy a new one.”
The talk around the dinner table these days with his wife Becky (nee Dagley) isn’t so much about new clients for her husband’s regular job but what glove is next. She has her own catcher’s mitt from when she played catch with her son.
Megerdichian lives in the same home he was raised in, in Cambridge. Besides his regular work and glove business, he’s remained very active with the Armenian community. A former AYFer, he has served as an officer of the Tufts University Armenian Club, and as a trustee of both the Armenian Museum of America and St. Stephen’s Armenian Church.
A younger son Eddie is a member of the Sayat Nova Dance Company of Greater Boston and a professional ballroom and Zumba dance instructor.
Last September, the Dagleys were instrumental in organizing one of the largest benefit dances ever seen in the Greater Boston Area, as hundreds showed up in Watertown for the event.
Proceeds went toward educational costs for their niece and nephew, Sona and Sarkis Dagley, who lost their parents at a young age. Both children will be spending time in Armenia this summer.
The Dagleys have opened an exhibit of metal miniatures created by Megerdichian’s late father, Abraham, who died in 1983. The Attleboro Area Industrial Museum is displaying 35 items of his dad’s nearly 400 collection pieces, all milled out of solid metal.
Megerdichian jokes that someday he’ll slow down measuring buildings and pick up more gloves to revive.
“There’s no greater satisfaction than meeting a soldier who needs a glove in good working order for use at his military base,” he brought out.
“Or putting a restored glove into the hands of a kid who might otherwise not have a glove to use.”
Tom Vartabedian
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