Same Game, Different Tools

“There was no paraphernalia in the old days with which one could protect himself. No mitts; no, not even gloves; and masks, why you would have been laughed off the diamond had you worn one behind the bat. In the early days, the pitcher was only 50 feet away from the batsman, and there was no penalizing him if he hit you with the ball.”

Hall of Fame outfielder Jim O’Rourke, who spent 23 seasons in the big leagues dating back to 1871, obviously didn’t think much of the introduction of some newfangled equipment to the National Pastime’s clubhouse when he was quoted in 1913. Imagine what the opinionated “Orator Jim” would think looking on the field at today’s game almost 100 years later.

However, as technology progresses, so does the ability to improve the tools of the trade. That progress – while often controversial – remains unending.

As visitors walk through the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, they often marvel at the evolution and advances of what we today consider the everyday tools used in the game. In fact, the Museum’s vast collection, both on exhibit and in storage, contains over 500 gloves, 1,900 bats, 900 uniforms, 700 caps, 70 batting helmets, 6,600 baseballs, 60 catcher’s masks, and 50 other pieces of catcher’s gear, including chest protectors and shin guards.

According to Hall of Fame Vice President of Exhibitions and Collections Erik Strohl, the evolution of baseball equipment is an important theme in the study of the history of baseball and its relationship to American culture.

“The history of the Industrial Revolution and the evolution of emerging technologies in America can be seen in microcosm through the lens of baseball equipment,” Strohl said. “Whether you are talking about the advent of new materials and their application to equipment (lighter and stronger metals, plastic composites, and synthetic fibers) or the innovation of new technologies themselves (tools for making bats, balls and gloves and the way equipment is manufactured and constructed), the emergence of new technologies in our society can be followed through the growth and evolution of the equipment of the game.

“It is one of the missions of this Museum to preserve history, and this includes the way that technology has shaped and transformed the game, just like it has all aspects of our culture.”

Whether it be the introduction of cork-centered baseballs and with it a jump in offensive expectation; the changes in gloves and the way they have revolutionized how teams and players approached defense; or how lighter, more breathable uniform fabrics allow for better comfort and range of motion for players, the sport’s equipment has and always will evolve for various reasons.

One of the baseball’s preeminent historians, Peter Morris, author of A Game of Inches, points to the glove as the one piece of equipment whose evolution has had the most important affect on the game.

“At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old-timer, I think when the game started you really had to be a very adroit fielder because they didn’t play with gloves or the gloves were minimal,” Morris said. “I think gloves made it possible to have a guy who just really wasn’t a very good fielder out there because it’s so much easier catching a ball with a glove. The early gloves were just cushions – they were there just to make it a little easier on your hand. And as they started to get webs and the mitt-like qualities then they started catching the ball for you. It required a lot less skill to catch a ball as gloves got bigger.”

Amongst the Museum’s most unique donations is the glove used by New York Yankees pitcher Brian Gordon on June 16, 2011. What was special about this was Gordon became the first player in Major League Baseball history to use an all-synthetic glove.

Much smaller than a fielding glove is the batting glove, a piece of equipment used by a batter to gain a better grip of the bat. While reports date the earliest batting gloves to the beginning of the 20th century, they were popularized by slugger Ken “Hawk” Harrelson in the mid-1960s. Traditionally made of a thin layer of leather or vinyl, much like a golf glove, the pair donated by longtime big leaguer Dmitri Young after he won the Hitting Contest and was named the Bob Feller Player of the Game at the 2011 Hall of Fame Classic can only be described as high-tech.

First introduced in 2010, the XProTeX, with a flexible layer of an impact-absorbing, rubber-like composite, reduce, according to the company literature, the impact of a player being hit by a 100 miles per hour pitch to the equivalent of 39 mph, and thus decreasing the chances of significant injury to the hands and wrist.