Former Giants GM Ernie Accorsi donates to HOF to help restore glove worn by Phil Rizzuto

This is a true glove story.

When the baseball Hall of Fame recently asked for donations to help restore a glove worn by former Yankees shortstop and Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto, one of those who wrote a check was former NFL Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi.

Accorsi, 84, was the Giants’ GM from 1998-2006 as part of a nearly four-decade career in NFL front offices. He engineered the 2004 draft day trade that brought Eli Manning to the Giants and hired Tom Coughlin as coach. That resume earned Accorsi a spot in the Giants’ Ring of Honor.

But those who know him also remember Accorsi’s love of baseball, especially the Yankees teams of the 1950s.

And boy does he love gloves.

So when Accorsi heard about Rizzuto’s pint-size (especially by today’s standards) glove needing a little conservation help, he didn’t hesitate to donate $50. Accorsi’s gift is listed by name on the Hall of Fame website along with those of others who, as of Monday, had contributed $2,130 toward the goal of $3,000.

“I’ve been a member of the Hall of Fame for a long time,” Accorsi told Newsday in a telephone interview. “I’ve always been involved in my own little way. But I’m just such a passionate student of history, all history, but especially baseball.”

Accorsi grew up in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and his first games were watching the Yankees play the A’s in Philadelphia. Accorsi became enamored with Rizzuto, the plucky 5-6 kid from Brooklyn who played for the Yankees starting in 1941 (with three years away for military service) until 1956, became a beloved Yankees broadcaster and was inducted into the Hall in 1994.

“I’ve always loved baseball history,” Accorsi said. “I’m reading a book now on the [St. Louis Cardinals’] Gashouse Gang. That’s my passion — to read about baseball history. So when I see something like that . . . plus, it’s a glove. I have this thing about gloves.”

So does the Hall. Not just gloves, but bats, uniforms, caps . . . pretty much any object among the more than 40,000 in the Hall’s collection that needs to be restored is done so through a painstaking process.

The Hall is also currently seeking donations to restore a glove worn by former Mets outfielder Tommie Agee in the 1969 World Series. As of Monday, $825 had been raised toward the goal of $2,500.

Restoration will be handled by B.R. Howard & Associates, an art conservation and restoration company located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, that is currently restoring five gloves for the Hall, including one worn by Babe Ruth.

Once the fundraising goal is met, the gloves will be transported to B.R. Howard. The process takes about six months.

Agee donated his glove to the Hall after the Mets won the World Series — in large part because of his defensive contributions in the Fall Classic — while Rizzuto donated his glove in June 1994, about a month before his induction.

The Hall does its best to keep its treasures in top condition. But displaying an object such as an 80-year-old glove can lead to wear and tear even under the best conditions.

“We’ve always had a pretty active conservation policy and plan,” said RJ Lara, the Hall’s director of collections and archives. “We have the top-of-the-line lights and top-of-the- line cases. We rotate things on and off display quite often. But sometimes objects have been resting and rotating and they just require a little bit more care, and so we send stuff off for conservation. That’s what you have with the Phil Rizzuto and Tommie Agee gloves.”

Lara said the Hall sends about 10-15 items a year to be restored. When an item comes off its display rotation, the Hall’s experts give it the once-over and file a condition report.

“For both the Rizzuto glove and the Agee glove,” Lara said, “based on their last condition report, we noticed that they need a little bit more love.”

Accorsi has personal experience with the process. One of his regrets is that he didn’t save his first glove from when he was a Little Leaguer (a shortstop, of course). But a few years ago, Accorsi found the same model on eBay and had it restored.

“It’s a three-finger glove,” he said. “Really, there were two regular fingers and a thumb and a big web. I went to one of these leather experts and he looked at me and he said, ‘Yeah, I can do some of this.’ I was already in my 70s. He said, ‘You don’t think you’re going to play with this, do you?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t want to play with it. I just want to look at it.’ ”

By Anthony Rieber

anthony.rieber@newsday.comAnthonyRieber

Anthony Rieber covers sports media and business and professional sports (you know, games and trades and things). He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since Jan. 1, 2026.