At Handmade Ball Gloves, we work hard to ensure that the baseball gloves we sell celebrate and encapsulate the golden days of baseball. Creating handmade catchers mitts is a big challenge – but a necessary one.

That is because the catcher’s mitt is the most distinctive glove in the game. Perhaps that is why so many kids dream of being the catcher. Sure, the special body armor and padding is part of the allure – at least until you walk a mile in those shin guards. But the catchers mitt. Ah, it’s just a special, thing of beauty – and at some point everyone who plays the game must acknowledge the uniqueness of the catchers mitt.

The catcher’s mitt is very distinctive, but there is a reason for that. The catcher needs to stop not just every strike that’s pitched, but every ball that’s pitched. The catcher’s mitt has the thickest padding, to help protect the catcher’s hand from that fastballs, and they have extra padding around the mitt to help keep the ball trapped in the mitt.

The mitt, like a mitten, usually combines at least 2 finger stalls, generally, the little finger and ring finger will share a stall. Some catchers will combine their index and middle fingers as well. While all baseball players wear gloves, the catcher wears a glove that you would more correctly call a mitt because of those combined stalls

The first catcher’s mitt was made in 1870 – but padding like we know today wasn’t added to the mitt until the 1880s. The catcher’s mitt was patented in 1890 by a former catcher named Harry Decker. Decker’s mitt looked a lot like a glove that had been sewn onto the back of a round pad. It covered the palm of the hand to make catching fast pitches more comfortable.

Most early catcher’s mitts were designed in this style – often described as the flat pillow mitt. It was Albert Spalding who popularized the catcher’s mitt. Wearing the glove had seemed unmanly at first, but he made it big business, and catchers were soon Spalding’s best customers.

Our handmade catcher’s mitt can help you to create a moment in time, as well as journey back to the early days of baseball.