by BretMan » August 30th, 2007, 6:13 pm
If you were to open up your glove you might be surprised- most likely you won't find any padding in the palm at all!
On most fielders gloves, the padding in the heel, thumb and pinky finger are easy to see and feel. But dead-center in the palm, right where the ball hits, there is nothing more than a couple of layers of leather, the outside shell and the interior lining.
Some gloves, especially first base or catcher's mitts, might have another thin layer of leather serving as a pad sandwiched in between, but nothing like the felt, wool or foam padding in the rest of the glove.
I remember when I used my first Rawlings glove with the built-in palm pad how much I loved that feature! You could take the hardest throws and not feel a thing. What a huge difference that was from my older gloves that would almost assure a bone bruise at the base of my index finger.
A batting glove can help a little. So can the Palm Gard glove, or any of the similar hand protectors on the market. I've known some catcher's to use a weightlifter's glove under their mitt.
Rawlings makes a gel pad with an adhesive backing that can be put in the palm of the glove, right where your hand rests. I've never tried one of those, but it looks like it would help. The Glove Doctor sells a leather pad with adhesive backing that the user can cut to fit before installing.
Something I've come up with in my glove repair business is to install a pad in the interior of a glove, in betwen the inner palm lining and outer shell. This requires removal of the wrist lacing and palm laces to get into the glove's interior.
I use a polyfill material that comes in thin layers. First I cut a pattern to the shape of the palm. Then, I use the pattern to cut several layers of the polyfill material and tack them together with a fabric glue. The custom-fit pad is inserted into the interior of the glove, then the glove is relaced to hold it in place.
Most of the gloves I've done this to were catcher's mitts. Since I do a lot of glove work for local teams in my area, I've had a chance to follow-up and get some feedback from the players using the mitts. They've all been happy with it so far!
but I am thinking about customizing one of my Rawlings gloves. My OR 520's are both in good shape, but it seems that these gloves were built with a minimum of palm and index finger padding. When I catch the ball, it feels as if I might as well just be using a batting glove. Now, some of you guys may be calling me a sissy ... and I will have to live with that, because it hurts! 
