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Joe Gunson-Style Catcher's Mitt

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

Out in the Western League in 1888, backstop Joe Gunson was dealing with a dislocated finger, which left the Kansas City Blues without a healthy catcher for their Dedication Day doubleheader. Gunson worked overnight on a solution.

Since the 1860s, protective hand equipment had made its way onto the diamond, primarily as a way to lessen the impact on a catchers hand. By 1888, it was commonplace for catchers to wear two fingerless leather gloves to protect their hands. However, Gunson's finger injury rendered that insufficient.

Working into the night, Gunson would write in 1939 to Hall of Fame curator William Beattie, that he “stitched together the fingers of my left-hand glove, thus practically making a “mitt”, and then caught both games.” He would improve the makeshift mitt by using a combination of a paint-pot wire handle, a flannel belt, and sheepskin to create what is regarded as the first round catcher’s mitt in baseball history.

Gunson's ingenuity would revolutionize the sport forever. The extra padding would allow for catchers to stand much closer to home plate that ever before. Gunson remarked that “the suffering and punishment [we] endured at the then fifty-foot pitching distances was all over.”

Unfortunately for Gunson, cutthroat competition and copycat inventions would prevent him from ever securing the patent for the catcher’s mitt, and he would never reap the financial reward for his innovation. Nonetheless, his legacy as a pioneer in baseball survives through witness testimony from his peers crediting him with the invention, as well as the continued preservation of that first makeshift mitt within the Museum's Collection.

This glove, currently on display in the "Taking The Field: The 19th Century" exhibit, needs additional care and conservation. Your donation can preserve the history of one of baseball’s novel inventions by one of its unsung pioneers.