His first glove, the one he got when he was maybe 4 or 5?

‘‘I had one of those Mizuno, the ‘power flexes,’ I think they were called,’’ shortstop Dansby Swanson said the other day in the Cubs’ clubhouse. ‘‘Basically, it was like they had this little slot that your thumb can go in that kind of just helps you close the glove better because you’re not that strong.’’

If he still has it, Swanson said, it’s probably tucked away somewhere in his parents’ basement in Georgia, where he was raised.

His glove, he said, is something he always has viewed as worthy of his TLC. Something to be treasured. Not to be left out in the rain, like many remorseful Little Leaguers have been known to do.

‘‘My glove is and always has been something I took care of,’’ he said. ‘‘I’ve always taken care of my glove from a young age. I never threw my glove. You know how some kids just chuck it? I never threw my glove. I always set my glove down.’’

It was true then, and in the big leagues, no diva is pampered more than the Wilson A2K 1787 model that is Swanson’s glove of choice. The glove, measured from the bottom of the heel to the tip of the index finger, is 11¾ inches. Dark-brown-dyed cowhide leather, infused with touches of red and blue to reflect the Cubs’ colors. Inscribed on the thumb of the glove is ‘‘All Dai,’’ a tribute to an old high school and college friend, Dai-Jon Parker, who died in a tubing accident.

The glove occupies its own shelf in Swanson’s locker. When he travels, it has its own special carrying case.

Before the Cubs boarded their flight to Texas after their game Thursday against the Reds, Swanson massaged his glove with mink oil.

‘‘I do it now just to coat the leather and protect the leather and moisturize the leather,’’ he said. ‘‘I’ve done that since I was little.’’

He gives the glove that treatment about once a week but always before a road trip.

‘‘Because leather can dry out on a flight,’’ he said.

Swanson might not know the whereabouts of his first glove, but the A2K 1787 never will require one of those AirTags people attach to their car keys to locate them. Swanson knows where his glove is. In the dugout, he always leaves it on the third step. If it’s not there, he knows someone has moved it without asking.

Other people are allowed to touch his glove, sure.

‘‘But no one puts his hand inside my glove,’’ he said.

Does everyone on the team know that?

‘‘It’s kind of an unwritten rule,’’ he said. ‘‘I don’t put my hand in — I don’t use it until the regular-season games. I don’t use it in spring training. I keep it in its little case, safe.’’

When the season is over, other equipment is packed up and kept in the clubhouse. Swanson takes his glove home with him.

Scott Paulson, a Wilson rep from Chicago, has supplied Swanson with his glove ever since Swanson played a dozen years ago at Vanderbilt, a Wilson client. Back at Vandy, Swanson took to naming his gloves. One he called ‘‘Charlotte.’’

Every spring, Paulson supplies Swanson with two or three new gloves. Every year since the pandemic year, 2020, Swanson chooses the same glove to be his game glove. Seven seasons of shelf life is a long time for a baseball glove.

Swanson is giving no thought to replacing it any time soon.

‘‘I hope it lasts the rest of my career,’’’ he said.

What makes this glove so different from the rest?

‘‘I’m, like, a very feel-oriented person,’’ he said, ‘‘and no other glove broken in has been able to feel like this one.

‘‘At this point, it just feels like an extension of my hand, and I don’t do anything special to break in gloves; I never have. The neat thing to me about gloves is, like, leather is always different, right? It can come from the same cow and still be different, how it gets stretched and laced and even the dye. Who knows how the dye impacts the leather?’’

You know how some NBA players can just look at a rim and see it hasn’t been set at precisely 10 feet? That’s how Swanson is with gloves. Not everyone’s glove. His glove. He can feel the difference in the leather. He also can tell, by an eighth of an inch, whether the glove is 11¾ inches. He actually prefers if it shrinks it 11⅝.

‘‘I feel bad at times because Wilson has always done everything I’ve asked,’’ Swanson said. ‘‘They’re amazing; they’ve treated me like family. They’re the best. But I feel bad because they can hand me a glove and I can, like, touch it and know if it’s good or not, really.’’

It’s all in the leather, he said.

‘‘There’s a softness in leather,’’ he said, ‘‘but there’s also a firmness and stiffness in leather. I tend to like the stiffness in leather more. If I feel I can bend it around the first time I put my hand in it, it’s too soft.

‘‘[Cubs second baseman] Nico [Hoerner] likes his glove super-stiff all the time. But mine is, like, formed so perfectly, it just closes the exact same way every time. It’s, like, stiff around the edges, but everything else is, like, supple and soft.’’

Swanson has won two Gold Gloves playing short, the first for the Braves in 2022, the second in his first season for the Cubs in 2023. Shortstop traditionally has been defined as a glove-first, bat-second position, although that started to change with the arrival of Cal Ripken Jr. and successors such as Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter and Nomar Garciaparra.

When he was a kid, Swanson wore out an old VHS tape called ‘‘Superstar Shortstops,’’ a montage of great fielding plays by shortstops from the time of Luis Aparicio. That film isn’t a distant memory. When the Cubs were rained out last month in Cleveland, he clicked on
‘‘Superstar Shortstops’’ and watched it on YouTube.

‘‘I’ve watched it all the time,’’ he said. ‘‘That’s why I really fell in love with the position of playing shortstop. Nomar was my favorite. Just something about his game.

‘‘But Derek and I have a little bit of a relationship. We have the same agent. We’ve had conversations. I have an appreciation for being great at what you do.’’

Whatever greatness Swanson has experienced in his career, he knows the A2K 1787 has been a part of it. He hasn’t given it a name yet, he said, but he has one picked out if he does.

Old Reliable.

Arguably the most hotly anticipated movie of the summer is none other than “The Odyssey,” celebrated filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning “Oppenheimer.”

It is a film the likes of which Hollywood rarely signs off on nowadays — an ambitious sword-and-sandals epic with massive sets, some practical effects, and a cast of thousands. The $250 million-budgeted tentpole, adapted from Homer’s epic and hitting theaters July 17, is the first in Nolan’s career to be shot entirely on 70 mm Imax cameras. It stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, a Greek king who’s embarked on a long journey home filled with one outstanding obstacle after another to return to his fearlessly devoted wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway). The all-star cast is rounded out by Tom Holland as Telemachus, Robert Pattinson as Antinous, Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, Zendaya as Athena, Charlize Theron as Calypso, Jon Bernthal as Menelaus, and Benny Safdie as Agamemnon.

In a series of interviews with Time magazine, Nolan and his creative team opened up about the making of “The Odyssey” and addressed the wave of online criticism regarding the armor of his warriors, which many online felt resembled Batman’s more modern-looking Batsuit.

“There are Mycenaean daggers that are blackened bronze,” Nolan said. “The theory is they probably could have blackened bronze in those days. You take bronze, you add more gold and silver to it and then use sulfur… With Agamemnon, Ellen [Mirojnick], our costume designer, is trying to communicate how elevated he is relative to everyone else. You do that through materials that would be very expensive.”

Nolan also defended the casting of rapper Travis Scott as a bard, whose appearance in an early trailer caught some by surprise.

“I cast him because I wanted to nod towards the idea that this story has been handed down as oral poetry, which is analogous to rap,” Nolan said.

Anyone who’s been following Nolan’s career knows the British filmmaker is painstaking when it comes to accuracy. On “Interstellar,” he hired a team of scientists to get the physics to be as accurate as possible. He took a similar approach to “The Odyssey.”

“For ‘Interstellar,’ you’re looking at, ‘What is the best speculation of the future?’ When you’re looking at the ancient past, it’s actually the same thing,” Nolan said. “‘What is the best speculation and how can I use that to create a world?’”

He added, “Hopefully they’ll enjoy the film, even if they don’t agree with everything. We had a lot of scientists complain about ‘Interstellar.’ But you just don’t want people to think that you took it on frivolously.”

The Rome Masters heats up on Tuesday as the men take the court for the round of 16, with Lorenzo Musetti taking on dangerous clay-courter Casper Ruud and Daniil Medvedev battling Thiago Agustin Tirante.

(8) Lorenzo Musetti vs. (23) Casper Ruud

Casper Ruud isn’t exactly the player you want to look across the net at on a clay court — and certainly not when there are concerns about your fitness, as is the case for Lorenzo Musetti. The Norwegian occasionally comes up short on the other surfaces — but not so much on the red stuff. Ruud has pocketed 12 titles on clay, made the final of Roland Garros two years in a row, and comes into the Internazionali BNL d’Italia following a quarterfinal showing in Madrid.

The real story here, though, is the fact that Musetti had some physical issues in his third-round match against Francisco Cerundolo — including cramping and leg pain. There is little to suggest that Musetti, who is typically a solid clay-courter, is physically fit enough to handle a player of Ruud’s caliber. Look for the Italian to exit.

Cheryl pick: Ruud in 2

Ricky pick: Ruud in 2

(7) Daniil Medvedev vs. Thiago Agustin Tirante

Each match that Daniil Medvedev plays on clay is a coin flip. He is capable of winning entire, legitimate tournaments on dirt (as he did in Rome back in 2023) — and he is equally as likely to crash out in the first round (as he did two weeks later at Roland Garros that same year). Medvedev is the world No. 9 playing the world No. 69 — but in no way does that make him an obvious favorite.

Thiago Agustin Tirante is 25 years old and just now coming into his own. He made the semis in Houston and won a couple of matches in Madrid, including an upset of Tommy Paul in the second round. The Argentine comes into the fourth round hot. On Monday he upset Flavio Cobolli, who was playing at home in front of a boisterous crowd. Medvedev, meanwhile, struggled against Pablo Llamas Ruiz — a 139th-ranked qualifier. Medvedev clearly has a chance to win this match, but I’m giving the nod to Tirante.

Cheryl pick: Tirante in 2

Ricky pick: Tirante in 3