Los Angeles Dodgers reliever Will Klein and Milwaukee Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski are bringing cards to the diamond — and they aren’t baseball cards.
Instead, the pitchers have shown off their favorite Pokémon cards thanks to gloves from 44 Pro, a San Diego-based company founded by Brent Habert that merges baseball with collectibles.
“We created a glove that features a perfectly sized top loader,” Habert said. “Pretty much any trading card game or sports card can fit into it and allows the player to kind of show off their style and what inspires them and what drives them beyond just playing baseball.”
Klein’s glove features Dodger blue leather, red lacing and a 2001 Neo Discovery Tyranitar card on the outer side of the webbing. Misiorowski, meanwhile, has a hologram Gengar card displayed in his purple and red glove, perfectly matching the Pokémon.
“For us, this was about bridging cultures together,” Habert said. “And so for us, the perfect answer was to put baseball and Pokémon trading cards together.”
While the pitchers can show off their 44 Pro gloves in practice, neither has taken their new leather onto the mound for an MLB game. Habert cited some concerns with the MLB rulebook, as MLB rule 3.07 (b) says, “No pitcher shall attach to his glove any foreign material of a color different from the glove.”
Still, Habert is hopeful he will see one of his gloves with a card in it during MLB action soon.
“We really want to see that glove come out of the bullpen with Will Klein or start the game with Jacob Misiorowski,” he said. “It would be a giant moment.”
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