Day 179 of 365 - The Mitt - cleaning out my storage shed I ran across my old youth league catcher’s mitt. It’s a Spalding 42-785 Larry “Yogi” Berra model. Yogi didn’t just agree to put his name on this glove, he worked with Spalding to design it. According to a blog post by Yogi’s granddaughter, Lindsay Berra, here how this revolutionary catcher’s mitt came to be. In game 1 of the 1955 World Series between the Yankees and the Dodgers, Jackie Robinson stole home. He was called safe but Yogi insisted Jackie was out. Yogi claimed that had he been able to make a one-handed tag it would have been more obvious to the umpire that he was out. But at the time catcher’s mitts were the donut-style, solid all the way around and required two hands to keep the ball from popping out when applying a tag. That winter Yogi went to Spalding and they worked together to design a mitt with a hinge at the bottom allowing the catcher to keep the glove closed with one hand. The glove debuted in 1956 and Yogi used a version of it to catch Don Larsen’s 97 pitch historic perfect game, the only perfect game in the history of the World Series. The hinged catcher’s mitt has been the standard in baseball since that time. My Dad bought this glove for me in 1969 from the PX at Fort Story. He often used it when coaching his teams. The second picture in this post is my grandson Robert with the glove. The fourth generation to catch with it. #legacy #baseball #yogiberra #catchersmitt #generations #iphonography #project365 #365photochallenge2022 https://www.instagram.com/p/CfXVUqeuAE_/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=