Different Way to Wear Glove

[TallPaul]

My wife's baseball coach told me he does not use the index finger of his glove. Instead all his fingers are over one place and there are two fingers in the last finger of the glove. I tried it and like it. Glove seems easier to close, easier to catch the ball. Really nice feel.

Anyone else out there that wears there glove in this unconventional way?

[TallPaul]

Well I found the answer. The book "Glove Affair" says that many outfielders wear their glove this way (two fingers in the pinkie slot, moving the rest of the fingers over, and leaving the index finger of the glove empty) to give them better closing power.

[kelleyathletic]

We get a lot of customers that do this. In fact, we have a Youth (t-ball) glove that is designed specifically for this purpose. It gives younger kids more strength to close the glove. For the older ages, we only see it for outfield. Infielders need to have better control over the pocket in order to get a quick exchange - you lose some of that control when you move fingers to the outter slots.

Here's our youth glove....

http://www.kelleyathletic.com/Products/Sports/Baseball/Gloves/YOUTH/Item/GLV_W2W_BB

[TallPaul]

Thanks, that glove you linked if unique. Very interesting. I did see a three finger (plus thumb) glove on Ebay, so the idea has been worked with in the past.

[dpwls]

As much as I prefer this way of wearing the glove (even for infield), I have never seen a very good version of the attempts at a 3 finger glove. Rawlings made a glove called The Vise or something like that with this idea in mind, but it had a tiny pocket... as though they actually just removed a finger from the glove rather than making it with 3 extra wide finger stalls. It was a terrible design. I haven't seen the Kelley glove, but hopefully their design is better than Rawlings' was.

Not only outfielders use this method... many pitchers (like me) do as well, which makes sense when you're fielding screaming line drives from 60 feet away! Less sting, more control.

It works well for infield if you keep your index finger outside the glove OR shift all your fingers over EXCEPT for the index finger. That gives the extra control you want without losing the feel of the ball in the pocket. My preference has always been two fingers in the last stall with all fingers shifted over and the index finger out... and I've played infield/pitcher all my life. My transfer time has always been pretty quick, if I do say so myself. :-)

Finally, if you're playing softball (as many of us are in our "advanced" years), you should absolutely wear your glove with the fingers shifted over... no matter your position.

[cjt1994]

David Wright (3B of the New York Mets) also uses this alternative way. I tried it and it feels WAY better than the standard way.