Why a Baseball Glove Can Tell the Story of America’s Pastime

For generations of baseball fans, the crack of the bat has defined the sport’s biggest moments. But award-winning author Ed Wheatley argues that another piece of equipment tells an equally compelling story: the glove.

On Saturday, Aug. 8, Wheatley will appear at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown to discuss his new book, The Finest in the Field: A History of Baseball Through 50 Iconic Gloves, which traces the evolution of baseball through the gloves worn by some of the sport’s greatest players, from Christy Mathewson and Jackie Robinson to Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente and Johnny Bench.

For Wheatley, the project grew out of a lifetime immersed in baseball.

His father played professional baseball in the New York Yankees organization before an injury ended his career. Wheatley spent his childhood around former major and minor league players in one of the country’s top semi-professional leagues in St. Louis. Today, he still competes in senior men’s baseball tournaments while writing books and producing films about the game.

“This is my eighth book on baseball,” Wheatley said. “If I’m not playing, I’m writing or doing something associated with the game.”

The book begins with the history of the baseball glove itself—a surprisingly recent invention. While Major League Baseball dates to 1876, players competed without gloves for nearly a decade. The first patented glove appeared in 1885 and early gloves had no fingers.

“It was just kind of like over the palm and it was not for catching. It was for protection of balls thrown in the palm,” said Wheatley.

Around 1900, manufacturers began adding finger stalls, though players still relied on both hands to secure the ball because gloves lacked a true pocket. That changed in 1919 when St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bill Doak worked with Rawlings to add a leather web between the thumb and index finger, creating what Wheatley describes as the first functional pocket. Fully laced webs between all the fingers would not become common until the 1930s.

“And that’s where the advent of the phrase that your listeners will immediately remember. ‘Use two hands’, their coaches, their dads [would say], because the one hand wearing the glove kind of stopped the ball and your other hand held it in against the glove for the out,” he said.

Those innovations, Wheatley said, helped transform baseball itself. As catching became easier, pitchers could throw overhand with greater velocity, defense improved and games shifted from high-scoring contests to lower-scoring battles built on fielding.

Rather than organizing his book chronologically by players or teams, Wheatley uses 50 historic gloves to revisit some of baseball’s defining moments. Readers encounter the glove used during Willie Mays’ famous over-the-shoulder catch in the 1954 World Series, Mickey Mantle’s running catch that preserved Don Larsen’s perfect game in 1956, and the glove Bill Doak designed before it helped tag out Babe Ruth attempting to steal second base in the deciding game of the 1926 World Series.

“What I try to do is build these 50 unique stories. So it’s not the repetitious same thing that happened. Each one is very different and unique. And that’s what a lot of people like because it’s not the same, but it revolves around the greatest players, the greatest moments, the greatest gloves,” Wheatley said.

The book also explores lesser-known stories behind iconic moments. Wheatley recounts how Brooklyn Dodgers outfielder Al Gionfriddo robbed Joe DiMaggio of a home run in the 1947 World Series using a glove with an innovative web design that DiMaggio later unsuccessfully argued should be outlawed—even though photographs show DiMaggio himself using the same style of glove.

Alongside Hall of Fame artifacts and historic photographs, Wheatley includes memories from players, broadcasters and Gold Glove winners, asking each a simple question: What was your first glove?

The responses, he said, revealed how deeply personal the equipment becomes. Unlike bats or cleats, which wear out or break, a glove is molded to its owner’s hand over years of use.

Players remembered not only the brand and model but how they softened the leather, formed the pocket and cared for it. Many still own those childhood gloves decades later.

That connection, Wheatley believes, explains why gloves occupy a unique place in baseball culture.

“You can’t have a glove without the word ‘love’ inside it,” he said.

Image: A gold glove awarded to San Francisco Giants pitcher Logan Webb is shown before a baseball game between the Giants and the Miami Marlins Sunday, April 26, 2026, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)