With These Gloves On Our Side, Who Could Pitch Against Us?
The XproTeX comes in three levels of protection. Pictured: The mid-level $50 Hammr.
Former Astro Craig Biggio was born two decades too early. The league’s all-time leader in Hit-By-Pitches never had the new XProTeX Armor of God gloves – which is a good thing for pitchers throughout the ’80s and ’90s. Had Biggio been equipped with this class of shielding, Lord knows how many more times he’d have have leaned into the batters box and taken one of the team.
The league has already given its overly protected thumbs up to the new batting glove that looks like a child’s macaroni art project. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Major League Baseball is making concerted efforts to shore up some of the everyday dangers that arise in the sport. The league has spent nearly four years deploying a popular solution on the light-but-easily-splintered maple bat situation. Last year it monkeyed with an oversized helmet made by Rawlings. This season, maple bats are banned and the Rawlings s100 helmet is mandatory in the minor leagues – a possible big league proving ground for such safety developments.
Ironically, the maker of the new über-gloves, XProTeX, was formed by X Bats president Jack Kasarjian, whose company is known for supplying some of the aforementioned maple bats to major leaguers. This time Kasarjian is on right side of the safety movement. The glove’s specially architectured padding, called Advanced Impact Composite (A.I.C. Aic? Ache? Oh, I get it.), reportedly greatly decreases the impact of a pitcher intent on beaning a batter in the knuckles. So, sorry headhunting hurlers – aim for the knee.
XProTex's top-of-the line Raykr retails for $80. The Hammr doesn't have AIC protection on the pinkie finger and the $30 Dinger doesn't have AIC anywhere but the wrist.
“Essentially it will reduce the impact by over 60 percent, so a 100 mph fastball will be reduced to that of a 39 mph fastball, which is the difference between being in a cast and being a little bit sore,” Kasarjian said.
“Guys don’t want to be the first one to try it,” Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon said. “Somebody’s going to try it and going to get hit and they’re not going to break their hand or wrist, and all of a sudden everybody’s going to want it. Or conversely, if somebody’s not wearing it, and they do get hit and get broken, he’s going to want it.”
Absolutely Joe. Players won’t care that the barnacle gloves look like they were scrapped off the hull of a clipper ship – it’s all about safety.
Just ask David Wright how quickly those Rawlings S100 helmets took the league by storm after everyone on the East Coast caught their breath from laughing at him.
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Photos courtesy of Flickr
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