What's up?
I'm Dan Blewett and I'm a former pro pitcher and I'm going to tell you today
the three different ways to break in your new
baseball glove.
All right.
So in today's video, we're going to talk about breaking in a baseball glove.
And we're going to cover a couple of different things.
Number one, the break points on the leather itself.
Number two, finger placement in your glove.
Why you might go two fingers in the pinky stall rather than one
finger in each pinky stall or each finger stall like you regularly would.
And we'll talk about how infielders break in their gloves versus outfielders
and the merits of not really squeezing your glove when you catch the ball.
All right.
So to get started here, I have a 12 inch pitcher's glove.
And this is an amazing glove.
I love this glove so much.
It's 12 inches and it's got a pretty deep pocket.
Now, the thing to understand about gloves is they can sort of be made more deep
or more shallow.
Based on how they're constructed.
This one just has a pretty deep pocket in general.
But then the way you squeeze the glove can make this pocket either
effectively shallow or effectively deep.
And that's the main thing we're going to talk about today.
So the first thing, this is what you need to know about outfielders gloves.
So if you're a pitcher like me or if you're an outfielder
or you just want to break your glove in this way, if you're an outfielder,
you absolutely have to closer glove from thumb to pinky.
And the reason you do that and you'll see all outfitters do this
is because when I do that, it makes balls essentially disappear
into the web like that. You see how deep that is?
That's what you want as an outfielder.
Because when you're running, especially when the
you know, the ground's not perfect, you get be big clumps of grass
or it's harder because the ground's cold.
You live in a cold climate, you're running or you're going to dive
and you want that ball really well trapped in that glove.
So you want a really deep pocket
outfitter gloves are made to have this deep pocket,
but they also are deepened by the thumb to pinky squeezing style.
Now, this is kind of uncomfortable going thumb to pinky.
If you have a pinky, if you have a finger in each of the painting
of the finger stalls.
So what almost all outfielders do is they put their pinky
and the ring finger in the pinky stall, and then they slide their middle finger
over into the second or into the ring finger.
So your ring finger? Yeah, your ring finger stall.
So the middle goes in the ring stall and the pinky
and the ring finger go in the pinky stall. So
when I hold it and you're not really going to be able to see it.
But again, these two are in the pinky stall.
This is here.
And then my index finger goes in the middle, fingers stall,
and there's nothing here in the index finger stall that is important.
So if you're an outfielder, that is how you want to break in your glove.
And then when you've got both fingers in the pinky stall here,
it becomes very easy to close your glove from thumb to Pinky.
That is really, really important as an outfielder.
And this is absolutely the way you want to break in your glove as an outfielder.
Now, as an infielder, this is now we want to do.
You do not want to have this deep pocket of your glove, because when you're trying
to get the ball out of your glove quick or transfer on double play,
you don't want to have to read too deep into your glove
to get the ball and find it and then pull it out rather, you want your
your pocket to be very shallow
so that when you can reach in there, it's right there and essentially you're
not even squeezing it that much is sort of like popping
and transferring from your glove right to your hand.
So what you'll see infielders do and this is not a glove, it's
built for infield. So this has a deep pocket.
Infielders, gloves in general are going to have less leather here
and it's going to be shallower.
So they're already helping to accomplish this effect.
But the way you can shallow make your glove pocket more shallow
is having one finger in each stall as normal,
and then you want to work it when you're breaking the glove
in to get this breakpoint here.
Let me switch to get this breakpoint here
to allow me
to get my thumb across at least three fingers.
And sometimes you'll see infielders squeezing their gloves all the way up here
where it's one, two, three, four fingers
are where the thumb crosses over.
And that's making a really shallow pocket.
And you can see the ball
very easily because it's not very deep and it's really accessible.
Whereas again, if I go to Pinky too, in the pinky stall now,
that ball disappears into the pocket of the glove
and that's something that you don't learn right away.
And if you didn't play baseball yourself as a parent or a young player,
that's not obvious. All right. So this is important stuff to know.
When you're around higher level players, they teach you all these little tricks,
like how do you transfer the ball so fast as an infielder?
It's because their glove is helping them.
It really does help.
So as an infielder, you want to work your glove by forcing it here
to make that permanent crease in this break point
so that your thumb is crossing over three or four fingers.
Okay. One other aspect.
If you want your finger outside to protect it from,
you know, the sting of hitting the pocket, that's a personal preference.
It doesn't make a difference either way.
That's completely up to you.
But I think most position players tend to not do that as much.
But again, completely up to you.
And then the last thing to really consider,
because the three things I want to talk about were
where you place your fingers in the stall, breaking in as an outfielder
and breaking them as an infielder.
And the last thing I want to cover
is not squeezing your glove when the ball hits it.
And this is something that's important when you're younger,
you kind of like actively squeeze it when you catch it, when you're older
and you have a stiffer glove. Like this is a Rawlings hard of the hide.
So this was a really stiff leather glove when I got it.
I essentially don't squeeze it.
I just let the ball hit the mitt and it collapses around itself.
And then I just sort of like pop it to myself.
A lot of players do that where they're not really actively squeezing the glove.
So if you want to keep your glove stiffer for longer and say you're an infielder
and you really want to focus on transferring,
you don't need to actively squeeze your glove and like do this
when you catch, just practice laying the ball, hit it,
It sort of collapses around it just gently and then really you're just
transferring it pretty much right away as the ball hits your mitt.
So that's just something to consider.
It's not really like a break in technique per se,
but it is something that lots of high level players do where they just,
you know, they're good at catching and they're just like,
hey, here's my mitt and I'm just transferring it to my hand.
And the squeeze part is kind of irrelevant.
So if you have a really nice glove
and if you're a pitcher and you want to keep your glove, you know,
pretty like stiff and in shape, like this glove is pretty old,
but it's still in really phenomenal shape, even though you can see some of the
the the black ink has worn off
or that the black dye has worn off, this glove is still in great shape.
I'll have it for at least another five or ten years
because I don't squeeze it too much.
And I saw just let the ball hit it and collapse around it.
So hopefully these three different tips of breaking your glove in were helpful.
Again, as an infielder outfielder, your needs are very different.
So your your finger placement in the other stalls of the glove is important.
And then again, where your thumb is going,
whether it's thumb to pinky is an outfielder
or a thumb across is an infielder that's going to really help
deep in the pocket or make the pocket more shallow, which is going to be important
for you getting the ball out or trapping and keeping it in there as an outfielder.
All right.
So if you enjoy this video,
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