Fred Bowen's "The Score" column,
May 4, 2001, Washington Post

If the Glove Fits

Every day during the baseball season, television sports shows are filled with replays of the spectacular, acrobatic catches that major league players make.

Baseball players are definitely great athletes, but they wouldn't make so many great catches without their modern-day baseball gloves. Hall of Famer Honus Wagner, who played ball until 1917, made as many 60 errors -- in one season. Alex Rodriguez, shortstop for the Texas Rangers, would be benched with a record like that.

Honus Wagner had a big disadvantage: He was playing with a puny glove that had no webbing or deep pocket in the middle.

The baseball glove has changed a lot over the years, and so has the way we play baseball. Here's the story.

When people first started playing baseball about 150 years ago, they didn't wear gloves. Players caught the ball with their bare hands.

Baseball was tough in those days, especially for the catcher. Don't worry, the catcher didn't crouch right behind home plate like he does these days. Nobody is that crazy. The catcher stood several steps behind the plate and caught the ball on the bounce.

Still, catching all those balls was hard on the hands. Doug Allison, a catcher for the Cincinnati Red Stockings (now the Reds) in 1869, got tired of his hands hurting and asked a saddle maker to make him a pair of gloves. Those gloves were among the first major league baseball gloves.

Not everybody thought Allison's idea was a good one. Lots of the old-time players thought players who wore gloves were sissies. Some players tried to wear gloves that were the same color as their skin so they would not be noticed.

The man who made baseball gloves popular was Albert Goodwill Spalding. He was a great pitcher for the Chicago White Stockings (now White Sox), and he started wearing a black leather glove in 1877 when he played first base. No one made fun of Spalding. He was one of the biggest stars in baseball.

In fact, more players began wearing gloves like Spalding's. Some players even bought their gloves from Spalding's sporting goods store in Chicago. (The gloves cost about $2.) By the way, that store was the beginning of the Spalding company that is still in business today.

Still, not everybody wore a glove. Jerry Denny, a third baseman for the Louisville Colonels, who retired in 1894, was the last pro player to play without a glove. What made Denny even more amazing is that he was ambidextrous. That means that he could throw with either hand. So, if Denny caught the ball in his right hand, he would throw it righty. If he caught it in his left hand, he would throw lefty.

But after Denny, all the pro players wore gloves. Over the years, the gloves got bigger and better.

Glove makers added more padding, making it easier to catch the ball. But probably the biggest change came when a guy named Spittin' Bill Doak, a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, designed a glove with a deep pocket in the middle and a two-string web between the thumb and the first finger. He took his design to the Rawlings company and that glove became a huge success. Ball players loved the new glove because it made them into better ball players.

Catching the ball became even easier as gloves got bigger. Today's gloves are more than twice the size of the puny glove Honus Wagner played with. And those bigger gloves are a big reason for all those unbelievable catches you see every day of the baseball season.

FRED BOWEN is the author of sports novels for kids.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company