Baseball is an immensely popular American game, known as the "national pastime," played between two teams of nine players each. The basic implements used in the game are a leather-covered ball, bats for hitting the ball, and gloves (also called "mitts") for catching it. Baseball is played in more than 100 countries, but it thrives most in the United States both as a participant's and spectator's sport. At the highest level (in the United States and two Canadian cities), 26 teams make up the American and National Leagues (each with two divisions, East and West). Combined, these leagues are called major-league (professional) baseball.
Baseball's popularity is in part a result of the fact that almost every American boy plays the game at one time or another, and the lore of the game is intertwined with American life. Most players who reach the major leagues have worked their way up through Little League, scholastic, college, and minor-league (professional) ball.
Softball is a popular alternative to baseball for women at the elementary school, high school and college levels, and, for the first time, will be an Olympic sport during the 1996 Summer Olympics held in Atlanta, Ga. Softball is played on a smaller field, and with the same basic equipment as that used in baseball. Fast pitch and slow pitch are the two styles of softball. Most softball played is the slow pitch game. The ball is pitched slowly in a high arc, making it an easy target for hitters. Thus the emphasis in the slow-pitch game is on hitting and on defensive abilities.
There now are men's and women's professional softball leagues, as well as regional leagues with national tournaments. About 30 million adults and children played some form of competitive or recreational softball in the United States in the mid-1980s, making it one of the largest team sports in the country.
Baseball (and softball) has supplied the American culture with a wide range of legendary heroes, as well as books, magazines, movies, and songs. The game has contributed hundreds of words and phrases to the American language.
Baseball (and softball), at its most fundamental level, requires only a bat (tapering cylinder of wood), a ball (usually a multilayered sphere covered with hide), and a place to play. The playing field is usually marked with four (4) bases, with space in-between, which make up the infield. The outfield lies around a portion of the infield. Once the ball is pitched, the batter attempts to drive it along a path that will elude the defensive players. The defending players try to catch the ball and advance it to a base before the batter, or a runner, reaches a particular base. Both the batter and runners may advance as far as possible on any hit. A one-base hit is a single, a two-base hit a double, a three-base hit a triple, and a four-base hit a home run.
To the original equipment of a bat and a ball, a glove was soon added as a necessary piece of equipment in order to protect a defending player's hand and facilitate the catching of the ball. Over the years, as the games of baseball and softball evolved, so did the players' equipment.
Today, competition requires considerably more specialized equipment, either for protection or to enhance an athlete's performance. The defending players wear a leather glove on one hand. The catcher's glove, the largest, is wider and less flexible than other fielding gloves, and is heavily padded. The first baseman's mitt is more flexible and has one compartment for the thumb and another for the other fingers. The remaining players use gloves with separate compartments for each finger and a webbing between the thumb and index finger. At the plate, a batting helmet is worn, while the catcher wears a mask to protect the face, a chest protector for the body, and shin guards to protect the legs and feet.
The ball consists of three layers: a cork-and-rubber sphere forms the central core; woolen yarn is then tightly wound around the core; and a leather casing is stitched together around the whole. The bat, is round. It is made of wood, aluminum, or a comparable metal alloy.
Hits come in many forms: deliberately gentle bunts to unreachable parts of the infield, hard-hit ground balls that travel between the infielders, bloopers popped in an arc beyond the infield but out of the outfielders' reach, line drives in front of or between the outfielders, and clouts smashed over the fence. Catching the hits, and fielding the ball, involves constant use of the hands.
In more recent years, baseball and softball players have demanded more protection for chronic problems that have existed with protection of the hands. The hands are known to be 25 times more sensitive than other parts of the body, and, in baseball and softball, subject to risk of injuries such as bruises, contusions, stress fractures, and the like. Particular areas of the hand are most susceptible to injury depending on the position being played (i.e., catching or batting), and the susceptible areas differ significantly depending on player position. While protection from injury is of paramount importance, often it must be weighed against a player's ability to feel, and thus control, the ball.
When catching, in spite of the protection afforded defensive players in the form of specialized gloves (developed for various positions), the padding in the gloves was found to quickly break down from the repeated impact of the ball, and players were prone to bruises and fractures in area of ball impact on the hand. Increased padding in the areas of ball impact, however, lessened tactile sensation, and inhibited ball control. To overcome these problems, while increasing hand protection, protective inner gloves were developed. Webster, U.S. Pat. No. 4,748,690, provides an inner glove specifically designed to be worn inside a baseball or softball mitt. The shock absorbing padding in the critical areas protects the hand from injury, while permitting ball control through tactile sensation.
For batting, batting gloves have been developed to provide hand protection. Batting gloves were less critical in the past, when wooden bats were primarily used. More recently, aluminum and metal-alloy bats have been adopted for use in baseball and softball. These metal bats have much diminished shock absorbing properties in contrast to the wooden bats. When using a metal bat, the shock of the impact when the bat hits the ball is largely passed on to the batter, increasing the impact to the hands. The impact of any bat with the ball transmits shock and vibration to the soft tissue and the bones of the hand which can injure the hand. A rotation momentum is also imparted to the bat on contact with the ball which causes the bat to both exert force across and around a batter's hand, especially through the area between the thumb and index finger, and impart a shear force to the palmar side of the hand. In addition, with impact, the heel of the bat is shoved into the lower part of the palm of the hand, which can cause further injury.
To protect their hands during batting, many baseball and softball players now wear at least one thin leather glove. These tight fitting leather gloves used by batters offer a better grip, but very little protection from the stings, bruises and other hand injuries that occur after the wood or metal bats make contact with the ball.
Stanley, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,561,122, although originally designed for batting, is a protective glove that is being used for catching and batting, but the Stanley glove does neither. The open-fingered format makes the Stanley glove difficult to insert, and keep in place, when attempting to use it with an outer glove (i.e., mitt). Moreover, it does not provide for the critical areas of hand protection. Its use as a batting glove emphasizes the finger-tip feel needed in the proper grip of the bat, but it lacks the better gripping surface that a full-fingered glove provides. Further, it fails to protect other critical hand areas susceptible to injury during batting because these areas do not need protection with catching. In trying to be an overall glove, it falls short of being adequate for either catching or batting.
Other batting gloves are marketed by Louisville Glove Company, of Louisville, Ky., Easton Glove Company, of Burlingame, Calif. and Franklin Glove Company, of Stoughton, Mass. These batting gloves, like the Stanley glove, have substantial deficiencies. Louisville makes two gloves--the Louisville Slugger TPS and the Louisville TPX-Pro Sting Stop. Easton sells its VRS glove and its MIP glove. Franklin provides a batting glove. Each of these gloves, while providing protection, minimizes the protection by only providing protection on certain areas--typically the palm surfaces of the index finger and thumb, and the upper palm of the hand. Critical hand areas of rotational impact are left unprotected by these gloves, as well as areas which are subject to the impact of the heel of the bat. Thus, the wearer's hand is subject to injury in spite of the use of these gloves.
Accordingly, there exists a definite need for a batting glove which provides protection to all of the critical areas of the hand which are susceptible to injury during batting. There also exists a need for a batting glove which provides maximum protection during batting. There exists a further need for a batting glove which allows for the batter's hand to have maximum tactile sensation when wearing the batting glove. The present invention satisfies these and other needs and provides further related advantages.