The Evolution of Baseball Mitts: From Bare Hands to Modern Gloves

On August twenty second, nineteen twenty two, a new baseball glove received its patent, which saw a deeper webbing between the thumb and the pointer finger, looking more similar to the gloves we have today, and was one of the final gloves to not have all the fingers connected. Today, we're going to dive into a brief evolution of the baseball glove on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history every day. And today's trivia question is what position were the first to use baseball gloves? Now today, playing a game of catch, or having an admit that you haven't seen in a while, or everybody having a mitt in their house is very common and we don't often think about how that mit came to be. We often just think it's always been there, but it hasn't, and it's had a lot of evolution through the years. As when baseball first started, there were zero mits. It was all bare hand. Even catchers caught the ball bare hand, and many catchers broke fingers, had welts and bruises as they used to stand far back from the home plate because of this, they didn't have a mint to help them catch the ball. And if a pitcher's throwing the ball eighty ninety miles an hour, it's going to hurt your hand no matter what. And if you've ever caught a baseball with your bare hand, you know it's got a stinging sensation. If you catch it just right with your fingertips and a little bit in your palm, it doesn't hurt as much. But the chances of you catching a ball just right with your hand is very difficult, especially in a game situation. So players around the eighteeneen seventies started to experiment and Doug Allison was the first to use a glove at the catching position. And what this glove was was it looked like what workout gloves looked today. It's just a fingerless glove with some padding in the palmp, so it's a very simple looking glove. And then five years later, Charlie Waite was the first to be recorded using a glove at first base. Now this makes sense that catcher and first base were the first to innovate using gloves because the ones where they had the ball thrown at them the most. The catcher from the pitcher and first basement from basically everywhere in the infield trying to get that batter out at first, but gloves didn't really take off until Albert Spaulding, who was a part of Our Brother's episode we covered previously, and if you remember from that episode, he was the first to really get gloves going, and not only because he was a great athlete in baseball and it allowed him to be a better player. As players didn't wear gloves because they thought it wasn't manly. You weren't a man if you couldn't hold a glove like this, and it's often done in sports. In football, you're not a man. If you wear a helmet, you're not a man. If you wear these pads in boxing, you're not a man. And if you wear gloves all these sports, it's often thought about. But these innovations that are thought of as unmanly really are just better for the league. Because of the glove. You can feel better. Because of that, you don't have to worry about pain and you can play more and that is really what revolutionized and Albert starting this along with starting his company with his brother, really helped grow it. He had the connections and he knew exactly what baseball players wanted, what they wanted, and what they didn't want. Because of that, it helped grow that brand and it helped really grow baseball gloves all over. Now, gloves went through a lot of different things. As we first started with that workout looking glove, and then we went to a glove that kind of looks like an oven mint in the eighteen nineties, which is just kind of a mitten where you have the thumb by itself and no fingers at all, and just some padding around the palm area, and then you go Then in the nineteen hundreds, catchers had a new kind of mit which was really kind of looks similar to what if you've ever seen boxers train the guy they're training with has those flat, padded things for the boxer to punch. That's really what it looks like. It's there's not much to it. You can't really squeeze, it's just to stop the ball and then you kind of drop it down into your hand. So it was a lot harder to catch with, but it helps your hands a lot. And in the field, they would have a glove that looks similar to if you've ever seen gloves that are for firewood for heat, where you have all fingers, but it's very thick leather glove. That's what these gloves look like in the field, very thick glove with some padding along the thumb and palm area, and all the fingers were not connected, and they richly worked their way up to have a little bit of webbing at the bottom between the thumb and the pointer finger. Then in the nineteen tens, in the nineteen twenties is when we started to get the webbing between the thumb and the pointer finger. Now this was we've done a few different ways. You had a strap, you had a few that were just kind of a leather lace between the two. But at this time they still didn't have the fingers connected, so you would only have the thumb and the pointer finger connected by this webbing, which is similar to what we have today, but a very primitive way of doing it is either just one strap or just like two lines of leather going back and then all your fingers could still move. Then in the nineteen thirties they started to use those straps that they connected the thumb and pointer finger together to connect all the other fingers, so you had more of a mint like thing, which is why we call it a MIT because it kind of looks like a mitten that you wear in the snow in the wintertime, especially when you're a kid, and it is more common to what we see today. And from that point there hasn't been a whole lot of structural differences to the glove as they have increased the webbing, made it a bigger webbing and had the fingers always closer together and make it more of a mold to fit the ball. But it's really kind of simplistic. Sometimes the webbing is complete where you can't even get see through. Sometimes there's some sea through, But really between the nineteen fifties and today, baseball mits are pretty similar quality of making. It is better as it's able to handle more force as there's more force from pitchers and players today from how they throw, and we have more specialized from catcher's mits to first basement myths. We even have mits for ambidexturis pitchers, which is a six FINGERMT. And each position kind of has different kinds of gloves and tend to have a shorter glove compared to outfielders that tend to have a much taller glove and much bigger and taller glove as they're catching more pop flack infielders are getting more ground balls. It's all kind of a preference of the player. And there's also been other companies besides Spaulding that have come out. Wilson has come out with gloves have become very popular as well as Rawllings has become a major player in the baseball glove world too. And in the nine fifties they also started to brand the leather which kind of burned the leather to put a player's name or player's signature in there. As around this time the nine fifties, players started to be endorsed by these baseball companies as TV rights were coming in a play and baseball players becoming more pop culture. This allowed them more to grow and allowed them to have signature gloves. And I'm sure all of us grew up having a specific player glove. I grew up having a kin Griffith glove. And as you go to the store, you'll see a player's name in there that you probably know because they're probably really famous that you probably know. Almost all gloves now that you buy do have a player related to that glove. So if you have a player you like, you can probably get a glove similar to what they'd use, will be exactly the same, maybe maybe not. Every player's a little different, but all these players are sponsored and their gloves sponsored, and that started in the nine fifties. And if you go back and you ever find one of those original gloves, one of those fingerless gloves, it's worth about ten thousand dollars if you can find one of the first baseball gloves before they had the webbing between the fingers. Those gloves consistently go for above five thousand dollars in the baseball memorabilia market, as they are continuously being harder to find and in good quality. As baseball players use the same glove over and over. I know most of us probably use the same glove from when we were younger to now, and gloves have consistently been made with leather that usually stands the test time. And unless you play one of those positions of cutcher or first base where you're constantly you're probably not going to have to replace your glove too much, which shows how far we've come and shows how great we got it to look at a nine fifties glove, and know that that's a baseball glove, even though it looks a little older, little different, but the same basic structure to today's glove. Is really impressive that we got it right so quickly. And guess what, no one has thought of not being a manly player now that they use gloves. It also helped baseball as within the first few decades, defensive efficiency went up a large amount in that first few decades of the nineteen hundred because players were starting to use gloves. And if you all know, a glove helps you catch the ball, helps you field ground balls, it helps you so much in playing defense. And as players started to use gloves, it helps erase at least one error from every team's game. And it also became known as the dead ball era because the defense got so much better than the hitting did, so innovation in the sport helped lead to an era. I want to thank you for listening to Today's Daily Sports History, and if you have a topic you would like it to cover, please leave us a rating review wherever you're listening, leave your name and the topic you want us to cover, and we'll get that done just for you, and come back tomorrow for more daily sports history and did you catch the answer today's trivic question what position were the first to use baseball gloves? And the answer were catchers and the first was Doug Allison who was the first recorded catcher to use a baseball to use a glove which was really similar to our fingerless workout gloves today