Dec 20th, 2009 | Written by tc | Posted in Sports |

America’s pass-time is just too popular to limit to baseball. Softball is an ever increasingly popular sport, and while it will probably never overtake baseball as a spectators favorite sport in terms of sheer numbers of people watching it, don’t think the smaller crowds mean that softball is taken any less seriously. And whether you’re taking it extremely seriously in a situation like women’s collegiate softball, women’s professional softball, girls softball at any level from recreational to travel teams, or to guy’s Sunday afternoon ‘beer softball’, you’re going to want to make sure you have the best gear possible, especially when it comes to your glove or mitt.

The difference between mitts and gloves, whether you’re talking about softball or baseball, is that while gloves have individual fingers, mitts do not. Think of a first baseman’s mitt, or better yet, a catchers mitt.  In fact, these are the only two positions on the field that use mitts instead of gloves. And the reason for it is that mitts are more likely to be able to control a ball better when it hits anywhere other than the sweet spot or the pocket of the glove. As you can imagine, balls being thrown at first base, much less being fired in at a catcher, the players are going to need all the help that they can get to make sure they maintain control of that ball.

While a baseball catchers mitt has a lot of extra padding around it to accommodate nearly 100 mile per hour pitches, it’s surprising to see that softball mitts don’t get that same luxury. And if you’re thinking that the reason is because they are having ‘soft’ balls thrown at them by girls, so they wouldn’t really need that extra padding… all I can say is 1) apparently you haven’t watched these women pitch fast-pitch softball, and 2) for your own health and well being, I would highly recommend you never say anything like that anywhere within earshot of a female softball player.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you!  To learn more about softball mitts and gloves, you can visit http://softballmitts.org/

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