How To Break In A Baseball Glove 2024 (DON’T DO WHAT I DID)

Our new glove break in method is officially my favorite approach. Nothing beats good ole catch but the room temperature water helps a ton!
Just to be clear I am generally disappointed with this pattern from Steelo but the break in itself went perfect!

so you have a new baseball glove needs broken in me too today we’re going to be changing things up though so normally I do hot water treatment today we’re doing a complete new method it turns out mine was outdated just to be clear our old ways aren’t bad it’s just that we found something better but here’s the plan step one find a glove that needs broken in we have 100 something gloves but they’ve all been used we already found one so good job step two we’re going to critique my past glove Breakin I’ve been doing YouTube for 4 years so we’ve come a long way step three breaking gloves with our new an improved method step four play catch with my dad and give him a surprise and hope he loves me let me throw down a base it’s time to be fully transparent I’m going to be showing you guys some of the good and bad from like my own history I’m going to let Josh be in the video because this is actually a mirror that was so cool yeah subscribe so we’re going to be focusing on two gloves here I broke this one in really recent and then this is actually my first how to break in a baseball glove video that’s pretty wild probably put the thumbnail up just for funsies but the point is is we’re actually going to critique this thing cuz uh not too hot let me show you this Breakin so I went traditional and look it two hinges that sounds great right this is the only way that this glove can close let me show you why that’s a problem this mauno here also wearing it traditional you can close it two hinges or close it up with just one hinge it makes an absolutely massive difference I actually need a ball gosh darn it do a rasist effect if you’re ever backhanding a ball catching a ball just straight in front of you you’re going to close with two hinges like so look it balls being swallowed absolutely perfect now let’s say I’m trying to turn a double play that’s where that one hinge comes in so now I’m receiving the ball like this so that it’s still wide open easy to grab boom and boom boom it just makes sense you need to break a glove in thinking how am I going to actually use it in game I’m embarrassingly out of breath I barely Ran So my whole point this glove is lacking that okay I can catch it like this it’s absolutely swallowed but it doesn’t really have that up close like look at how awkward that looks that’s a problem and that’s my fault with that being said here’s an outfield glove just a beautiful break-in also if you’re an outfielder and you need a glove emry Cordura please consider it super super super light I personally love this absolutely swallows ball floppy in a good way two hinges is perfectly fine in the Outfield you don’t need that like up close or anything like that you just need something that swallows the ball so as an outfielder don’t worry too much about that once again for any infielders you want to break your glove in like this not like this this isn’t bad but it’s not great glove of choice this selo 11 1/2 inch proide number one glove by Pro players what does that mean man it’s the Contour X that’s what matters I don’t love this glove I’ll be honest but it’s going to be great because it’s 100% not broken in also if you play Outfield I will help you out a little bit at one point in the video I’m trying to touch everything glove breaking I’m doing my best okay with glove break-ins we’re going to start off with like three main goals the first one is just loosen up the leather as much as you can specifically focus on your heel here cuz it’s really thick so pinch together and just rub Back in Forth all these laces are super stiff so anyway loosen the thing up as much as you can to start it might seem dumb but literally just push on this glove in like any new Direction just to move it around and if you’re new to this uh don’t be afraid to really push on this thing you’re not going to break the glove you’re not going to break the laces uh be tough with it this is absolutely crucial I need to decide how I want to close the glove but the glove also has its own opinion so right now the glove wants to close ring to thumb and I’m okay with that I’m going to just do that but here’s an example this maruchi here we broke this in two in the pinky and when you close even like that a baseball can fit through the top so the glove is saying no that’s not how I want to close cuz that doesn’t work so real realistically it should just be this one hinge cuz now no baseballs fitting through there there’s a pocket and everything so you have to make sure you’re paying attention to what the glove wants to do and how the glove should close cuz sometimes that ain’t going to work did I say goal two was to decide how the glove closes if not just put whatever put that in um Chris from the future I’m about to give you a couple Pro tips let’s get it if you’re using a mallet do rollovers it’s like this you hit and then roll it over it’s going to help you get like deeper close it’s also going to get the glove used to snapping shut rollovers rollovers rollovers rollovers rollovers they actually do help a lot second thing hitting the Palm is helpful okay but really all we’re doing is kind of getting the glove used to catching a ball so hit the pocket that’s kind of it you can also hit your second pocket if you’re an infielder tip three while you’re doing all of this hitting mold the glove the way you want to so if you’re rolling the fingers do that if you’re flaring flare whatever just do it while you’re hitting it my last tip seems wild but just go crazy and hit the back of the glove you don’t need to do this a ton but this is going to loosen up all this leather a lot so don’t worry about what it looks like cuz it’s going to look disgusting in a second here but if you do that a little bit and then kind of reshape it that just broke in all this leather a tonso okay look at this bad boy goal three is to just absolutely smash the glove I’m using a mallet you can use a mallet I meant to say you could no that was just dumb a 5B weight you could use like a 5B weight 10 PB weight something like that like a rubber a rubber weight is what I wanted to say if you have kind of like you need a blunt object to hit this with even a baseball bat can work so what we want here is to have two hinges when we close so a thumb side and a pinky side and like we were showing it’s going to go thumb to ring finger so knowing that start smashing away hitting the glove overall just anywhere honestly kind of helps loosen up the whole thing but I’m specifically focing I’m specifically focusing on the heel and especially a thumb hinge and then a pinky hinge I have to make an announcement a ton of people comment saying like I did that and it didn’t work I think this is what people are getting wrong let me just show you this is me smashing the glove I’m pushing them outet into the glove into the ground and then this is smacking it like holding it like this and going like this this does hardly anything don’t do this you need to shove hit hard and push it down into the ground okay if you’re just gently smacking it it’s doing absolutely nothing so don’t waste your time smash don’t Smack all right I’m going to smash the glove around a little bit more and then we’re actually going to introduce our new break in method I just took a nap that’s not going to go on the video it’s going to go on the video this ladies and gentlemen is our new method so normally we do a hot water method um I’ve come to learn that it’s not like it’s making the glove fall apart but it’s not f for the glove so actually room temperature water we’re going to see how much of a difference it really makes I’ve just heard from very very trusted sources like for example AZ glove lab um room temperature water is better so I’m filling this with just room temperature water and then you’re going to see but the method is going to be actually just dunking the glove in and out really fast it’s not like has to be super fast but the whole point is we’re not going to like hold it under and then just like pull it out it’s just dip in out I’m excited cuz I’ve never done this so let’s go Planters yeah yeah instead of good I’ve been watching videos delete all of this so we’re actually going to be doing two gloves here this is Jenny’s my wife she was supposed to break it in and uh she didn’t this is our Stila let’s just show this is how much we can close this right now let’s dunk it I don’t think there’s like a real method to this I will say I feel more comfortable doing it this way rather than this way cuz like water will just flood down the fingers this way a little bit less push down come up and maybe do one of these I just want you guys to know I’m really just hitting it in the same ways that it was before you always want to be trying to make a pocket by hitting a way back here if you’re an infielder you also want to hit over here on your fingers it’s like your second pocket is how you should view that when the glove is wet like this you’re able to mold it the way you want so like if you want to flare this is really where you want to start doing that the biggest thing is just shaping it exactly how you want it when you’re ready to let it dry once you set it down and let it dry make sure it’s in the perfect shape of what you want it’s crucial yeah dude this is wild like it’s wet but like just like look at this like I just dunked that and do you see how like it like got wet but it also just didn’t it’s crazy it’s smart the glove is wet but you can see we have just an easy close right now thumb to ring I’m going to hit it just a little bit more but then honestly just PL catch is going to be the next thing up so I should mention if you don’t want to dunk your glove that’s totally fine just do everything that we’ve talked about and then once you can get to a point where you can close the glove easily if you can make your fingers touch somewhat easily play as much catch as you can man and I just want to stress you’re playing catch like casual catch when you’re breaking a glove in you don’t want to be catching 90 90 90 cuz then your web and laces are going to sling back cuz it’s too hard to catch on your actual hand play Within just casual distance catch the ball perfectly in the pocket as often as you can it’s really just about using it to be honest it’s not that hard it’s just being persistent and then using it uh some kids take two weeks to break in a glove and other people take a year so so we just found out that we filmed quite a bit with uh no audio so let me resay stuff we don’t love the glove that’s just kind of the truth here so this is the clothes all right this is what we’re working with I to be honest I don’t like that I just don’t like that all right and then if I try to do that like up close what the this might sound like a lame excuse but it’s just a pretty bad pattern so anyway we’re going to do what we can I’m going to let this dry I’m going for a flare on both sides and then the rest of the fingers are just a big bowl and it’s just going to close two hinge like that okay we got to work with it that’s all we got to do okay this is a glove for my dad so it it’s not really a secret I’ll be honest but I don’t want to break it in front of them it’s kind of a loser thing to do that doesn’t make sense it’s really not but anyway this is a baseball Outfield glove but it works great for slow pitch which is what he’s using it for uh with this being said I want to do a quick word to our outfielders you’re number one one goal as an outfielder is to make a glove that is open slaps shut really easily you know thumb to pinky is great thumb the ring is no worse okay it’s not a big difference all you want is a deep glove that just swallows the ball when you put the glove in front of it easy all right let me show you normally we’ll break our thumb H in like this right that’s good that’s normal that’s fine but if you want this to close thumb to pinky one thing that’s helpful take your thumb and encourage it to go this direction past the pinky and hit it okay now on our pinky side you want the thumb to be going past the pinky again so break the hinge in inward towards the pinky the whole point is you want to encourage the glove to close really really deep I don’t think it’s super crucial like if the glove wants to naturally close like this that’s fine that’s plenty deep don’t worry too much about it here’s a great example this is my glove of choice for outfield when you close it it goes between thumb and Pinky that’s not true it goes between the Pinky and The Ring that’s what I meant to say boom I mean just like it’s it’s just so satisfying you want an outfield glove to have that like slap effect where it just boom boom boom boom boom the reason I like this so much is cuz it has that slap effect but there’s no glove lag when I move my glove quickly left to right the whole glove is always there it doesn’t go like does that make sense no glove lag I don’t know why I did that let’s go this is broken in we’re going to go deliver it whatever you’re keeping they’re just arguing Hey Dad are you busy yes what do you want hey never mind I need you to tell me if this is good enough for you not good enough for me except my Rob’s First basement no yeah he uses a first basement right now while he’s pitching so that’s part of the problem broke in enough for me yeah broken in enough to be going to play catch with yeah I could play catch with all right do you want to play catch let’s play some catch go play catch with your dad this is just a paid actor