Kevin Kiermaier uses the word “game-changer” when talking about a small rectangular stainless-steel unit in the back of the clubhouse at the Toronto Blue Jays’ state-of-the art training facility in Dunedin, Fla.
It stands a few feet tall, about the size of a small ice cream cooler. But open the top lid, and it’s brimming with warm steam. Players place their new baseball gloves on the pegs inside for a few minutes and the steam softens up the leather to make it more malleable.
For some, steaming is one step in the meticulous, individualized process of breaking in a stiff new glove for the major-league season. Others may caress the glove with a damp warm towel instead, or bang on its pocket with a glove mallet. Some use lotions, pastes or oils on the leather. The odd guy still swears by warming his new glove in a microwave. Others hardly fuss with a new glove at all, arguing you just need to catch a few thousands baseballs with it.
Gloves are the one item of equipment that the Blue Jays clubhouse staff stays away from, unless a player specifically asks for help with it. “Players have such a personal relationship with their gloves. We will not even put our hands in a guy’s glove,” says Scott Blinn, the Blue Jays director of major-league clubhouse operations. “Players break them in, they care for them. The process is an art.”
Whatever the method, it’s the beginning of a player’s relationship with perhaps the most uniquely personal piece of equipment in sports. A big-leaguer will mould it to his hand, hold it close to his chest, throw it down in anger, use it to catch fastballs behind the plate, scoop up line drives from the infield dirt or snatch home runs off outfield walls. It will wear his sweat and travel with him from one ballpark to the next, an instrument that becomes an extension of his body and must – no pun intended – fit like a glove.
One can learn a lot about a player by asking him how he customizes and cares for his gloves. Its patches and stains and inscriptions say a lot about his personality and his accomplishments.
