You've heard of hot bats? These gloves are hot out of the oven

March 5th, 2024

JUPITER, Fla. -- What’s cooking in Yankees camp? Baseball gloves, believe it or not.

The days of tying up your glove with rubber bands and putting them under your mattress are over, apparently. and -- on the advice of Anthony Rizzo -- are breaking in new gloves by putting them in the oven.

“Rizzo told me the hack for breaking in a brand-new glove,” Torres said. “When you put it in for two or three minutes, it comes out and feels game-ready. I went with him one day, and it felt good.”

Torres recently approached Volpe and told him, “Yo, I have the hack. I know how we can get our gloves broken in faster.”

Volpe was intrigued.

“I trusted him; he told me it’s the best way to soften it right up,” Volpe said. “He said that’s the hack, him and Rizz. Whatever they’ve got, I was going to try it. I've heard of people doing different stuff to soften the leather up, but nothing like this.”

Torres and Volpe took their new gloves into a kitchen at George M. Steinbrenner Field, where one of the stadium employees put them into an oven to heat them up for two or three minutes.

In a video Torres posted to social media, Volpe looks skeptical about this supposed hack, but he’s now a believer. Both Torres and Volpe used those gloves Monday night against the Marlins.

“Besides my glove making me hungry because it smells like fajitas, it was worth it,” Volpe said. “My glove was not broken in at all. I’ll probably do it a couple more times. It’s spreading through the locker room.”

Torres admitted the idea sounded strange to him initially, but as is often the case around the Majors, when a veteran such as Rizzo talks, people listen.

“Veterans, they know things,” Torres said. “It’s crazy.”