Baseball Glove
A baseball glove
or mitt is a large leather glove that baseball
players on the defending team are allowed to wear to assist them in
catching and fielding balls hit by a batter,
or thrown by a teammate.
Some say the first player to use a
baseball glove was
Cincinnati
Red Stockings, in 1870,
due to an injured left hand. The first documented story of glove use
however concerns Charles Waitt, a St. Louis outfielder-first baseman
who in 1875 donned a pair of flesh-colored gloves. While glove usage
was not accepted by all players at first, being considered "sissy" by
many, it slowly caught on as more and more players began using
different forms of gloves. Many early baseball gloves were simple
leather gloves with the fingertips cut off, supposedly to allow for the
same control of a bare hand, but with extra padding. The adoption of
the baseball glove by baseball star Albert
Spalding when he began playing first base influenced more
infielders to begin using gloves. By the mid 1890s,
it was the norm for players to wear gloves in the field.
Since their beginnings, baseball gloves have grown. While catching in
baseball had always been two handed, eventually, gloves grew to a size
that made it easier to catch the ball in the webbing of the glove, and
use the off-hand to keep it from falling out.
From Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia
Now,
gloves have taken on many shapes and sizes:
* Catcher's mitts have extra padding and
a hinged, claw-like shape that helps them to catch 90+ mile per hour
fastballs, and provide a good target for pitchers to throw at. If
required to catch a knuckleball,
a catcher will typically use an even larger mitt.
* Pitcher's gloves usually have a closed
webbing to allow them to get a grip on the ball without tipping their
pitches
* First basemen's mitts are generally
very long and wide to help them with scooping badly thrown balls from
infielders. These mitts lack individual fingers.
* Outfield gloves are usually quite
long, to help with both catching fly balls on the run or on a dive and
so they do not have to bend down as far to field a ground ball, so they
can return it to the infield.
* Infield baseball gloves other than the
first baseman's tend to be smaller, to allow the fielders to easily
remove the ball from their glove to make a quick throw to a base.
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