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LOOK: Minor league player Dalton Wheat wears heavy leather work gloves when he bats

Dalton Wheat

Things are always a bit unorthodox in Minor League Baseball. But that normally comes in the form of strange promotions. For the Greensboro Grasshoppers, a Class A affiliate of the Miami Marlins, the apparel of one of their players is what’s unorthodox.

As Jeff Mills of the Greensboro News & Record noted, the gloves that outfielder Dalton Wheat wears to the plate are a bit unusual, to say the least.

Instead of standard batting gloves, Wheat wears heavy leather work gloves when he bats — yellow-and-gray Tillman model 1414 drivers gloves, size medium, to be precise.”

As Wheat noted, the gloves are like other batting gloves in that they’re leather, but are “a lot thicker.”

This all begs the question. How did Wheat come stumble upon this unique method? It apparently dates back to when he was in junior college.

“I loaned my buddy my pair of batting gloves,” Wheat said, per Mills, “and the next day we were in separate hitting groups and I didn’t have any. I got a big blister on my hand, and I wasn’t just going to go bare-handed. … I hit with them that day, and I hit really well. So I kept them through the whole fall, thinking I’d get a new pair of batting gloves when the (spring) season starts. I got a new pair of batting gloves, put ’em on — and I didn’t like them. So I just stuck with these.”

Of course, it’s also important to note how Wheat is performing.

His overall 2017 numbers leave something to be desired. But Wheat has hi .348 in June. So, maybe he’s onto something, after all.

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