Imagine trying to catch a baseball traveling at roughly 80 miles per hour with nothing protecting your hands. It stings just thinking about it doesn’t it? Surprisingly, this is the way the game was played in the late 19th century. The gloves that were used in those days were designed simply to knock the ball down into play. The palm of the hand was covered by a small amount of padded leather and the fingers were fully exposed.
The few players that actually wore these gloves were often ridiculed by their colleagues as being “sissies”, not worthy of playing the game. Soon the players noticed the value of this new piece of equipment and embraced it. Once the glove became more widely accepted, the amount of broken fingers in the leagues decreased. The first gloves of the 20th century had full covering on the fingers and contained a bit more padding. As the years progressed, leather lacing was used to connect the fingers and a pocket was formed, allowing the ball to be caught instead of just knocked down.
The few players that actually wore these gloves were often ridiculed by their colleagues as being “sissies”, not worthy of playing the game. Soon the players noticed the value of this new piece of equipment and embraced it. Once the glove became more widely accepted, the amount of broken fingers in the leagues decreased. The first gloves of the 20th century had full covering on the fingers and contained a bit more padding. As the years progressed, leather lacing was used to connect the fingers and a pocket was formed, allowing the ball to be caught instead of just knocked down.
I didn’t even think of this as being a technology at first, but it must of taken some scientific research on to how develop materials to protect players. This could have advanced the technological processes to strengthen materials that could be applied to other materials needed by workers for protection. The 19th century is notorious for poor working conditions and protecting workers from machinery during the industrial revolution.
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