Gloves off the Field Ruling 1954

[Brian McKenna]

Some reference a 7/12/1952 game between WAS and CWS in which Sam Dente tripped over Pete Runnels glove as sparking the rule that fielders were no longer able to leave their gloves on the field.

It would have been the 3rd out of the inning. WAS scored two runs after that to win 2-1.

Was that the impetus for the rule or something else?

[64Cards]

On the HBO special "When it Was a Game" they have old footage of players tossing their gloves back behind their position after the 3rd out of an inning. Totally bizarre, I wonder how it got started...after all, the first gloves weren't really more than a small piece of leather that barely covered the hand, why not just bring it into the dugout after the 3rd out. I would think that players would have tripped over them or have to step around them in the field occasionally. Also, what if it was raining? Would they just leave their gloves laying in the wet grass?

[Ytown Tribe fan]

I never understood why any player, at any level, would leave his glove on the field. Am I to believe that these highly trained and highly paid athletes are too lazy to carry their own gloves off the field with them?

[64Cards]

I don't believe it was a case that they were too lazy too carry them off, it was a custom to leave them on the field. How the custom got started is beyond me, I would just guess it may go back to the very early days of the game, whem a group of guys would get together to play and maybe they were lucky to have 9 gloves for each position, so they'd just toss it behind after the 3rd out. Just a guess.

[Dodgerfan1]

I also wonder if sprinkler heads in the outfield were eliminated after Mickey Mantle screwed up his leg for life after stepping on one as a rookie.

[Brian McKenna]

I would just guess it may go back to the very early days of the game, whem a group of guys would get together to play and maybe they were lucky to have 9 gloves for each position, so they'd just toss it behind after the 3rd out.
There were no gloves in the early years of the game

[64Cards]

Well somewhere along the line they got gloves, maybe they could only afford 9 of them.

[Gee Walker]

It was routine when playing ball at recess when I was a kid in the 60's - some kids brought their gloves to school, others didn't, and other kids were too poor to own one. So you left your glove on the field as a courtesy. Sometimes that meant that you played second base with a catcher's mitt...

So was this a little piece of left-over courtesy that stuck around long after there was any need for it? In the 1880's, when there was a mix of guys who played with gloves and guys who didn't, were the gloves left on the field just in case the gloveless opposing shortstop injures his hand during the inning and finally says "Enough is enough - I'm using a glove from now on!"?

[Brian McKenna]

Major leaguers started using gloves at the same time or probably earlier than sandlot players; hence, they didn't develop customs from their youth. At some point gloves became too bulky for their pockets and the just tossed them onto the field.

Does anyone have pictures of gloves on the field during the 1890s or 1910s?

This also means that Wagner, Cobb and Ruth and and other greats up through DiMaggio played their entire careers tossing their gloves onto the field. Any pictures either tossing or picking their gloves up?

Any early articles (say before 1920) about the practice?

Like someone said, it would seam strange to toss your glove onto a wet, soggy field in the rain.

[rugbyfreak]

Well somewhere along the line they got gloves, maybe they could only afford 9 of them.

I've seen that HBO special (there are 3 parts, by the way, all covering different eras, all footage taken from players' hand-held movie cams, which were a trendy item beginning in the '30s).

It's a wonderful doc, and the part about leaving the glove off the field seemed so quaint, and deadball-era to me. I remember doing it as a kid when playing pickup, but it was only when someone on the other side was sharing a glove. I couldn't fathom why major leaguers would do it, since it seemed out of the question that every player wouldn't have his own--and even it he didn't, since we occasionally read about a game where someone is without their mitt, why would he ever ask the other team before asking one of his own players? So we're forced to think maybe it was just lazy, or one of those ingrained customs that nobody completely broke--until a rule forbidding it was specifically made.

I have to agree that, at the major league level, it's way too sloppy to allow, and it was a good thing they made it official. Thanks for listening!

freak