Sports Basement

Monkeys love baseball!

Monkeys root for baseball teams they love baseball so much.

Monkeys can start rallies.

Monkeys have been baseball fans since the way back times.

Making of the gloves

Wrist construction close up

We made a cone out of the newspaper and then taped up the wrist hole to just the size to be able to slip a hand easily but not slip out easily. This was the most critical step in the whole process.

Bigger shot of the wrist construction

Just the wrist portion

Being modeled.

How we made the extremities

This is the back of the glove showing how we taped the thumb and pinkie up.

Thumb takes shape

We ripped the paper in the thumb and pinky joints so we could wrap them individually.

Fully wrapped fingers

This is a fully wrapped glove minus the webbing.

Webbing

We cinched the pinky in tight with the webbing and also determined the size of the pocket by how much slack we put between the thumb and other fingers. This was designed to be an outfielder's glove, the grey one (which we didn't document too well) was designed to be a smaller infielder's glove.

Close of the half made webbing

We also made a bat and ball

The ball was easy, but the bat used lots of sheets of rolled up newspaper layer after layer until we created just the right shape and feel of a real baseball bat. I think we came very very close. It felt pretty good. I think it was heavier than a wood bat of equal size.

Monkeys also love boxing.

Homemade heavybag

Wrapping the first layer of duct tape

More wrapping

We found that tag-teaming the wrapping was the best choice as nobody got dizzy.

Taping the bottom

We put way too much tape on the bottom. We over-engineered the bottom. Three layers plus the eventual addition of the straps.

Another layer on the bottom

Lincoln out to hunt wild newspaper

About 70 lbs. of newspaper

Stolen from newsstands all up and around San Francisco.

The empty bag before filling

Filling the bag with paper

This was difficult, tiring and left our hands newspaper-ink-black.

The bag full of paper.

Stomping down the newspaper

The tighter and more compact, the heavier. And since we were making a heavybag...

Look, a heavybag.

Lowteck loves it.

Guardian September 2008

At the bottom of a newspaper stand we found a bunch of old newspapers chilling out under the newspaper shelf, we unearthed them and found some old(er) papers in there, I thought they were cool, so they go in the proof.

Guardian December 2008

Putting the straps on

One strap wrapped from the top, around the bottom, over the top to make the hanging loop, back down across the bottom, then back up to the top. We wanted it to be strong.

Second strap

They needed to be the same length at the top of the loop, so that the was no more pressure on one than the other.

Lowteck spies the finished bag

Action shot!

Lowteck kicking that thing's ass!