| The
Hoboken Collection (1880-1955)
75
years of Baseball Glove Design & Evolution
Elysian
Fields - Hoboken,
New Jersey, summer of 1846
Baseball
history was made on a small field along the Hudson River in the shadows of the
New York City Skyline. "Base Ball" or "Town Ball" is forever
linked to 1839 Cooperstown, New York but 1846 Hoboken, New Jersey is where Alexander
Joy Cartwright and The New York Knickerbockers Base Ball Club developed and published
the first rules of the game. Maybe this is why Hoboken is proud to say it is baseball's
birthplace. Baseball
Gloves developed much in the way the game developed. Slowly. Gloves first appeared
on the diamond in the 1870's. Players that were tired of bruising or breaking
fingers began wearing gloves to protect their hands. Initially, players wearing
these "garments" were mocked or considered "unmanly." Today
enthusiasts of baseball associate "tan gloves" as "traditional"
but players may have selected the flesh color to camouflage their embarrassment
of wearing a glove. Fortunately for baseball players by the time the turn of the
century came around everyone was wearing a glove.
Evolution
of the Glove
In 1880 the baseball glove looked like a cut-off work glove. Fingertips were still exposed in many early gloves. Padding was
minimal. Catchers and first baseman usually wore a glove on each hand. Fielders
usually wore one glove on his catching hand.
By
the early 1900's the glove developed full fingers and looked like an open hand
and felt like an oven mitt. Heels or padding on the base of the glove appeared
to give a pocket so the ball would not fall out.
By
the 1920's fielders' hands were still taking a punishment so a web or lace was
added between the thumb and pointer finger. Catcher's mitts & First base mitts
started looking more like a round pillow to cushion the blow of a hard throw.
In
the 1940's gloves developed lacing between the fingers. The "three-finger"
glove became a big hit. That same decade the first baseman's "trapper"
appeared. What made the 'trapper" so different was that its shape was more
advanced and easy to catch a ball than its cousin the fielder's glove. By
the 1950's actual deep "pockets" were being developed into the gloves
with lacing and sewing that sculptured the padding. "Heels" were losing
padding. It
wasn't until 1957 when the fielder's glove added a hinge that spawned additional
modification such as closed backs and checkerboard webs in the 1960's. Not much
changed in the next three decades.
Enter
Today's Sole Glove Innovator: In
2001 Akadema, a relatively new sporting goods upstart came up with the concept
of a small-fingered glove it called the Reptilian (due to the shape of its webbed
fingers). The Reptilian increased the pocket size and featured small digits that
looked more like fingernails to scoop the ball. Like other revolutionary gloves
in the past some "traditionalist" thought the glove was "odd."
The Reptilian however was a commercial and professional evolutionary success.
The small company followed by creating evolutionary designs for outfielders, (The
Claw, 2002) and catchers, (The Praying Mantis 2003). In 2004 The Sporting Goods
Dealer Magazine recognized Akadema for "10 Companies to Watch" and "25
Most Innovative Leaders"
Evolution
& Acceptance (Don't go hand in hand) But
why does baseball glove evolution seem to take years or sometimes decades? And
why do innovative concepts take so long to be accepted by baseball players? Glove
expert Noah Lieberman, author of Glove Affairs- The Romance, History and Tradition
of the
Baseball Glove explains,
| It
took almost 90 years for ballplayers and glove makers to shake off the belief-or
was it instinct? -That the glove must look like the hand. Today gloves now have
a "thumb reaches nearly as high as the fingers do, its set into the glove
at the low point, and its set quite forward from the palm and the web." Since
1957 "gloves have a fully expressed hinge. Your hand has no such thing (it
doesn't need it, because the thumb and finger move brilliantly on their own),
but a glove must have one, to allow the hand to do the work." "In
most respects (early glove designs) were like a hand held wide open. The evolution
of the glove is, in part, the slow realization that a glove must reflect how a
hand moves to catch a ball, not how it looks when you stare at it." "Finger
laces exemplify this necessity. Try and we can't conceive of a glove without them.
(In the 1930's some) models offered finger laces, but most people rejected the
idea because they felt they needed individually articulated fingers to grab a
ball- as if they were catching bare handed." Notes Lieberman in his book.
Today,
Akadema is the only manufacturer designing new patents for gloves that follow
the revolutionary lineage and evolutionary designs. |
Noah
Lieberman comments in a recent interview," "Akadema is the most creative
of the 15 baseball glove makers in the market today. There are forces of tradition
that these guys are bucking."
And
so Akadema, the manufacturer who bucks tradition and continues to evolve the glove
also tips their hats to the old designs when the .400 hitter was king.
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