What’s the Best Glove for My Youth Baseball Player?

The stretch of time between the start of “kid pitch” and high school baseball is a critical period for baseball development. Kids are starting to learn more advanced hitting, fielding, and throwing techniques. The ball is moving faster, the field is getting bigger, and players are getting stronger. During this time, it can be hard for parents to understand what type of glove works best for their youth baseball player.

A T-ball or coach pitch glove – the kind you can pick up cheaply at a major department store, for instance – isn’t going to cut it. However, higher-end professional glove models, like a Rawlings Heart of the Hide or Pro Preferred, will likely be too unwieldy for young players to handle. So, what should you look for when you’re shopping for a youth glove?

We designed the Rawlings Breakout series specifically for this segment of players – the ones we call “rising stars.”

We believe there are four main attributes that help the Breakout series support a young ballplayer’s development and give them a reliable, high-performance gamer.

1. Higher quality materials

The Breakout series is made with an all-leather shell, which is a significant difference from many other youth gloves. Genuine leather has been the industry standard for high-performance gloves for more than a century, and for good reason: Leather is flexible enough to adapt to your child’s specific hand shape and glove-closing pattern, but firm enough to retain its structure, even after thousands of catches throughout the season. Going with an all-leather glove will help young players get a better feel for the hand work and glove responsiveness that’s required for higher-level play.

2. Easy break-in process

Many young players can be scared away from all-leather youth gloves because of the break-in process. Usually, leather gloves require some softening, loosening, and shaping before they’re able to close comfortably and easily around a baseball. We designed the Breakout series to minimize break-in time – you can even take a Breakout glove directly out of the box and onto the field. We specially selected a softer, lightweight leather that’s easier to close, but still keeps the shaping and structure qualities we mentioned before. Plus, each Breakout glove comes with a factory break-in so it’s ready for play by the time it gets to your door.

3. Lightweight & designed for youth hand sizes

Our higher-end professional glove lines, like Heart of Hide and Pro Preferred, are built to be used by MLB ballplayers. These gloves are the best you’ll find anywhere . . . but they’re not necessarily the best for youth players. Often, because of the thicker leather and adult sizing, these gloves can be too heavy and/or too loose to reliably perform for youth players. That’s why, with the Breakout series, we put a focus on keeping the glove as lightweight as possible. We also optimize the internal structure of the glove to fit comfortably and securely on youth-sized hands. This helps players feel more confident securing hard hit groundballs and line drives.

4. Durable & made to last

Durability is one of the most important features to look for in a youth glove. No parent wants to be shelling out money for a new glove every six months, and no player wants to have their glove get worn out right after they’ve gotten used to it. The Breakout series is designed to stand up to the more intense schedules that often accompany a player’s first season playing tournament ball. Plus, they’ll deal with harder hit balls much more reliably over time than other youth gloves.

Understanding what makes the best youth baseball gloves

One of the beautiful things about baseball gloves is that they mature along with us. As we learn more about the game and how we like to play it, our gloves can change too. Finding the right glove for your youth player is about understanding how they’re playing the game and how they need their glove to feel, perform, and last. That’s what the Breakout series is designed for.

And, once your ballplayer is ready to graduate to an adult glove, they’ll be comfortable enough to go straight to a Heart of the Hide or Pro Preferred – just head into our Custom Glove Builder to get started.