History
Some claim the first player to wear a batting glove was Bobby Thomson of the Giants, who wore golf gloves during spring training in 1949. Others say that Ted Williams was the first to wear a golf glove in batting practice during the summer of 1953, after he returned to the Red Sox from Korea. According to David Cataneo, the veteran sportswriter who wrote I Remember Williams: Anecdotes and Memories of Baseball's Splendid Splinter, Williams' manager, Fred Corcoran, who also managed Sam Snead and Babe Zaharias at that time, was with Williams one day while he was taking an extra batting practice to get back in shape. Corcoran saw the blisters on Williams' hand and pulled out a golf glove and gave it to him to try. Soon, everyone was wearing a golf glove while batting.
The first person to wear a batting glove in a game was Ken "Hawk" Harrelson. Some sources say Harrelson first wore golf gloves while playing for the Kansas City A's in 1964. Others cite a more lyrical and perhaps apocryphal tale, in which Harrelson was with the Red Sox in 1968 and, not expecting to play in a night game, spent the afternoon playing golf. Arriving at the ballpark with blistered hands after shooting 27 holes, he was surprised to find himself in the starting lineup and resorted to wearing golf gloves to protect his sore hands. Rusty Staub was the first to wear the golf gloves on a daily basis.
Batting gloves became an essential and common element of MLB during the early 1980s with Mike Schmidt of the Philadelphia Phillies spearheading efforts of Franklin Sports to become the choice of the majority of players. Over time Franklin Sports became (and remains today) the official batting glove of Major League Baseball.
Read more about this topic: Batting Glove
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)