It is a wonder that manufacturers have not discovered that SBF is the best focus group they could ever hope for. It seems like the collected wisdom here is that Rawlings makes great gloves, but they gotta fix the damn lining issue!
I respectfully disagree. It's safe to say that they're aware of the opinions on SBF. But to be perfectly honest, they have to treat them as an outlier. This is a tiny section of the market. A bunch of glove nerds wanting the ultimate. We are more akin to the Star Wars guy who collects the action figures & then writes to the toy manufacturer about some detail they got wrong!
A glove maker's target market is:
- Baseball
- 8 to 15(?) years old
There's almost nothing, when it comes to brand of leather, stiffness or patterns that really appeals to that market segment. So while it's okay to make small runs from time to time for the "glove aficionado" end of the market, it's not a good business plan for the overall general population. It's human nature to want to think of yourself as, "the norm". Whatever it is that you like, everyone else also likes....... More often than not, this is not the case. There's many a failed business based on this premise.
Officiating both baseball & softball (on all levels) allows me to see, in real time, what players are using. The vast majority of participants, from youth to adult, are using sub $150 gloves with the lion's share of them being sub $100 gloves. You don't start to see high end gloves until the 10-12 age group from travel team players & even then it's still in the minority. A good portion of what you do see are hand-me-downs. Dad's/Grandpa's/Uncle's old glove........ Every so often you will see the new high end glove mixed in. Mostly of the stock, big chain store variety. You see plenty of adults using their old baseball glove. I do see a new glove in the mix once in a while, but more often than not, it's from someone with more money than sense. You will also see a lot of high end gloves being used by the "former college player" crowd. Just last week I saw a brand new Pro Preferred. I didn't examine it too closely but it looked to be a PRO200-6K. The player it belonged to looked to be in his 20's so while he could've still been playing baseball, it looked completely out of place in a coed softball game!
