Vintage Baseball Glove Forum

I found this glove on ebay (item number 330222049525), Has anyone seen one of these in person?

I've seen one or two in the past selling on Ebay.
Are they comparable to the HOHs?

Any idea what year these came out? Great looking glove, just curious, I love rawlings trapeze gloves.

I have a 1996 TB-24 Black w/tan laces HOH and I love it. Old school horween leather

R

I've never had the chance to see one in person but, like you, see them on eBay fairly often. The last few I've seen brought fairly respectable prices for a non-endorsed modern era glove, probably due to the unique design.

It's kind of cool that the glove has the "Playmaker" logo on it, a throwback to the three-finger Playmaker gloves of the 40's and 50's.

Back in 1980, I bought a big 14" MacGregor three-finger softball glove and loved it, using it until it just about disintegrated. The three-finger design really does seem to increase the amount of leverage you can get when closing your hand, which I belive was the original intent of the three-finger dedign.

One thing I've wondered about on these gloves is the "sewn panel" design on the palm leather, where the leather in the palm is two panels sewn together, instead of being one solid piece. I guess that's something that was done to get the "two-tone" color effect.

Is there a name for this technique? It seems to have been revived lately on inexpensive gloves. I wonder if there is some cost savings involved by making a glove that way. I also wonder how durable the stitched seam would be in the palm like that.

I noticed the sewn palm on this glove also and it piqued my interest.

Some of the cheaper gloves are made in factories that try to maximize the out put of a single hide of leather. By making the glove's components smaller and then stitching them together, they utilize more of the hide.

I've been working on some glove designs that incorporate this feature and it has nothing to do with cost savings or aesthetics.

My concept for an outfielder's glove is to use a stiff leather for the fingers and heel and sew a softer leather (like Kangaroo) in the palm. The object is to create a supple pocket for the ball to sink into while the stiff fingers offer structural support. For an infielder's glove, I would sew a stiffer leather in the palm which would allow an infielder to get rid of the ball quickly.

I'd love to hear some feedback on these concepts.

Thanks,

The split palm as we call it is for cost, use the better leather in the catching area and cheaper or in the lower models vinyl else where. also when you split the bigger parts it makes for better cutting yields which is VERY important as to the cost of the glove and by useing two different colors it adds to the glove. I guess I just gave 2 reasons ha. but they started out as low level cost savings and now help in the selling apperance, on a futher note the switch to high quality nylon thread has allowed the 2 piece palm to survive just fine which wasn't true with cotton thread used in the old days. Thats it for glove manufacturing 101 test later.
Bob

I remember seeing some Rawlings softball gloves (RSG-series) called the "Soft Touch" gloves that used a split palm. The body of the glove was black and the palm/catching area was a grey suede type of leather. These must have been from the 80's or 90's.

the only HOH glove that i've seen (so far) is the 2-tone xpg7 billy williams, fastback, basket web, with gold stamping. strange that they would want to cut corners on a high-end glove.

That was a long time ago no telling who's idea it was. but as you know it didn't take over the the line so others must have realized it didn't belong on gloves at that level