Along the thumb – where Wong has in previous years stitched “Aloha” or a Bible verse – he has, in gold script, “Hawaiian Style.”

“I feel like last year I really fell into my own as a defender,” Wong said. “I always told myself to do it my way, to do it my style. That’s what that says. That’s me, the way I play. At the beginning of my career I think I was nervous, nervous about making mistakes. I knew my window of playing was real limited and I had to impress. So I was always trying to do the right things and put pressure on myself to make the routine plays. When I started doing that, I made all those errors, made all those mistakes. I got caught up in the mental aspect of that instead of just playing my game, trusting myself.”

The evolution of Wong’s fielding has matched the changing style of is glove.

A devotee of Rawlings, the St. Louis-based company that invented the Gold Glove Award and has recently been acquired by Major League Baseball, Wong uses one glove a year as his “gamer.” He got his new one in early December and it’s almost game-ready as he readies for spring training. He’s been using it in drills during the informal workouts he and his teammates have had at the Roger Dean Stadium complex since late January, when he relocated to Florida.