For many Americans, growing up playing catch in the yard is a part of life. And while most will never come close to achieving professional sports glory, they still hang on to their baseball and softball gloves — using them in adult leagues playing for leisure later on in life, or passing the gloves on to children of their own.

One thing all of those gloves have in common, though, is being made of leather, which if you want it to last, requires care and maintenance.

While he’s spent the past 32 years working as a carpenter, Ken Ervin is now offering leather care and maintenance, and a lot more, for owners of baseball and softball gloves.

He recently founded KTMK Gloves out of his Aberdeen garage. He is now a practicing leathersmith, repairing and restoring gloves for customers across the nation, and even stitching together new gloves.

“Baseball and sports have so many life lessons from the game that transfer over into life as you grow, and every glove has a story,” Ken said when visited at his garage workshop on Thursday, Jan. 29. “So people will send me their gloves. It could be they used it all the way through high school and college, or it was their dad’s glove and their dad is no longer with them. But the glove has those memories of playing catch, all those special memories. And the glove is the symbol of that, so people want to preserve that. Even these gloves that will have patches sewn on and things like that, it’s just another part of the story. The story of the glove keeps living on and those memories are preserved.”

An Aberdeen High School alumni born and raised in the area, Ken played baseball in his high school days and went on to coach softball with his two daughters, Malia and Kensie.

“I became one of those fastpitch dads. That’s kind of how this started,” Ken said. “My daughters both played fastpitch, and over time, you gotta repair stuff. I’m a carpenter by trade. I still work full-time in the construction industry, so I like to build stuff. I started out just fixing their stuff. Next thing I know, I’m fixing team players’ gloves, friends on the team, and it just grew organically. There’s just nobody around that does this anymore.”

When he was growing up and playing in high school, if he needed any leather repair done to his glove, he took it to the local cobbler.

“Those guys don’t exist anymore, so this is kind of a lost craft,” Ken added.

Initially, the leather work was just a hobby he did in his free time, but over the last several years, more people would come to him with their gloves, leading him to officially establish KTMK Gloves. KTMK stands for his family’s initials, Ken, his wife Taprina, and two daughters Malia and Kensie.

Now, he’s gone from working on gloves for his daughters’ friends to getting gloves to repair and restore from customers around the nation.

“Last year, I had 500 gloves come in from all over the country,” Ken said.

Some of those gloves included one from a former player living in Georgia who used their glove in the NCAA College World Series, while others come from customers much closer to home. Like an Elma woman who had been hanging on to her old softball glove — until it unfortunately turned into a chew toy for her dog one day.

“Her dog got a hold of it, chewed the crap out of it. But you know, it’s her gamer, it’s her story, and she wanted me to fix that,” Ken said. “So she brought it in, and I rebuilt that section. All new leather, new bindings, and put it back together. … When she came to pick it up, and when she saw it, just the look on her face with all of the memories coming back. She thought she’d lost the glove. She put it on her hand and was just like, ‘This is so awesome.’ That’s what it’s about. That’s the story part. To be a part of that, in that journey with somebody, is so cool, and so humbling.”

Humility, which is not only one of the life lessons baseball teaches many, is also incorporated into Ken’s business, as KTMK Gloves’ motto is “play hard, stay humble.”

“Always stay humble, no matter what it is, no matter how good you are at something. Whatever it is, stay humble,” he added.

On top of glove repairs and restoration, Ken also stitches brand new custom gloves together for customers, using the same professional-grade kip leather big-name glove companies like Wilson and Rawlings make their gloves from.

And while Wilson and Rawlings both offer custom glove creators on their websites, the creation process can get pricey, and it’s as far as those companies go when it comes to customer interaction in the creation process.

Ken likes to take a more personal approach, as he did recently with a new custom glove order from a Texas customer.

“When I got the order, I saw it and thought, ‘something looks off on this order. I just want to make sure.’ So I called the guy. He answered the phone and was totally surprised that I called him,” Ken said. “I said, ‘Hey, I got your order, thank you, but I just wanted to walk through your order, make sure this size is right.’ We talked it through, his daughter was there, and we ended up making some adjustments to that order. Now it’s going to be a better fit for his daughter. That’s what KTMK is about. It’s about family.”

Aside from new custom gloves and glove repair, customers can purchase leather conditioning balms, glove bags, elastic glove wraps for storage and even wallets. Being a leathersmith, Ken also takes on general leather-work commissions — including recently resizing an old leather belt for a customer to wear after they inherited it from their late brother.

Additionally, he can break in new baseball and softball gloves for customers if they desire.

Now that he’s 14 months away from his retirement as a carpenter, Ken is looking to continue growing KTMK Gloves, and seems to be in a good position to do so with spring training about to begin.

So, whether you want to breathe new life into your old hand-me-down glove, design a new custom glove or need some glove care products ahead of the upcoming baseball and softball seasons, KTMK Gloves has you covered.

For more information, visit KTMK Gloves’ website at https://ktmkgloves.com/, or follow the business on Facebook, Instagram or TikTok.

Ken can also be reached by email at ken@ktmkgloves.com, or by phone at 360-581-8265.

Glove lacing leather in a variety of colors hangs from the wall of KTMK Gloves founder Ken Ervin’s garage workshop.