Parents find son's baseball glove in thrift store 40 years after he lost it, probably feel bad for grounding him

It's a little-known fact that a 90 percent of the sporting goods industry is supported by absent-minded kids who lose equipment their parents buy for them, thus forcing their spineless parents to buy the same thing for the kids a second time.

Actually, this is just a theory, but it's at least worth mentioning given this New York Times story about a couple of South Florida retirees who wandered into a Jupiter thrift store recently and happened to see the very glove their 12-year-old son Christopher had lost. Forty years earlier. In Ohio.

Apparently Michael and Julie Lisi visit the same store many mornings, and on this day, Julie glanced up and saw a worn glove with her son's name written in block letters and on sale for $1.49.

“I thought, ‘It can’t be,’ but you can always tell the markings on your kids’ things,” Julie told the newspaper.

What's most remarkable about this story is not that their son lost his glove and they found it a 1,000 miles away four decades years later. It's that the couple actually has video footage of the last time the glove was in Christopher's possession. From the Times story:

In 1978, he was on a Little League team in Willoughby. That year, during the season’s final game, he hit two home runs and his team won. His parents recorded him on their 8-millimeter camera as he was mobbed by other players in celebration.

In the excitement, Ms. Lisi said, her son may have put his infield glove down.

He never saw it again.

Well, until earlier this month that is, because now Christopher has his glove back. He's 52 and a teacher and a high school football coach in Ohio, but it at least solves the biggest lost glove mystery since Jesse Orosco threw a celebratory glove into the air that never came down.