The Orioles explain how to break in a baseball glove like a big leaguer

It was cold in Oklahoma this winter, yet Jackson Holliday still needed to get a new glove ready for play. The leather was stiff, freshly made, rigid to the point where casual catch and fielding grounders would not be easy.

So he put that glove in the microwave.

Aside from a player’s bat, his glove is the most important piece of equipment in baseball. That mitt needs to feel like an extension of one’s arm, an appendage with the capability of snaring a fast-moving object.

Getting to that point is different for everyone on the Orioles team. Players and manager Craig Albernaz were asked the simple question, How do you break in your glove? The answers ranged from simple to complex — from the patient approach to the microwave in Holliday’s Oklahoma home.

“It was freezing in Oklahoma,” Holliday said. He grabbed that firm leather mitt, added a bowl of water and clicked 30 seconds. “I don’t know if that’s the best way to do it, but …”

The goal was to soften the leather, and because he didn’t have an official glove steamer at his home — a machine that softens the leather by mixing heat and liquid — he went for the quick fix. For the unusual method, the glove looks in good health.

Holliday pulled another glove from his locker. “This one is pretty decent,” he said. He got it during spring training, and to speed the process of molding it to his hand, “I put a lot of shaving cream on it and threw it in the sauna.”

A short while later, when it was all hot and loosened, he brought it out to play catch — thus forming the pocket the way he prefers.

Holliday is on the far end of this. Most others in the Orioles clubhouse avoid old-school methods such as shaving cream and certainly don’t use the microwave. But glove oils or leather conditioner are popular applications used during the break-in process and throughout the glove’s life.

Others swear off those, even. Right-hander Tyler Wells is a glove traditionalist. He wants his leather left alone, apart from the pop of the baseball and his sweat.

“I’ve always been a stickler about my gloves and how they get broken in, and for me, it’s like it’s part of a sacred ritual of getting a new glove,” Wells said. “That’s your time with it.”

So he never puts anything on his glove, letting the leather grow with him naturally.

“The best way to break in a glove for me is to play catch with it,” Wells said. “I always like to equate it to full-leather shoes. Leather insoles, everything like that. Over time, leather, as you heat it up and you use it more and more, it starts forming to whatever that is over time. You see that with a nice leather wallet. You see the imprint of your cards and stuff like that. I like to take that approach with the gloves and really just try to use it as much as I can when it’s super stiff and allow it to break itself in, and it morphs to my hand so much better than trying to do it any other way.”

Wells doesn’t do this as much anymore, but especially when he was a kid breaking in a catcher’s mitt, he’d go to a batting cage, sit behind the plate and catch balls over and over. “Don’t try to do the whole Happy Gilmore thing,” Wells advised, referring to Adam Sandler’s character taking pitches to the chest. “Try to catch the ball.”

Or find the hardest-throwing kid on the block and ask them to play catch. That constant act of catching will form a pocket naturally over time.

When Albernaz was young, growing up in Massachusetts, the cold weather prompted him to speed the break-in process by using shaving cream and dunking his glove in warm water. From there, he’d begin to mold the leather into its desired shape.

He has replaced that with simply playing catch. But beyond what Wells does, Albernaz, Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman all use varieties of leather conditioner to maintain their gloves.

“There’s this car leather reconditioner called Lexol. That’s what I’m biased of,” Albernaz said. “You use that when it’s broken in and it keeps the leather still intact, so it doesn’t crack, especially when you play every day and the wear and tear. It reconditions the leather but also doesn’t make it heavy. Some glove oils actually make the glove extremely heavy.”

The climate matters in all this. Rutschman said if he tries to break in a new glove during the offseason in Oregon, it may take all winter. During spring training, though, most players find success by using the heat.

“Just play catch with it, ground balls, just use it,” Henderson said. “It might break in faster if I use a mallet or something like that, but with my gloves, usually just sweating in them. Obviously, we’re in Florida, so sweating is pretty easy to do. I usually just wear it out and play catch with it.”

Henderson will know his glove is ready if he can routinely field back-hand grounders with it, even if a ball strikes him in the palm of his glove.

Jeremiah Jackson often uses the bat or mallet approach, which means hitting the pocket of his glove to simulate where a ball would land.

“I’d put it under my bed [as a kid] and I’d sleep on top of it,” Jackson said. “Then I realized that was probably not the best idea because it closes it weird. So now I put it on, use it, throw with it, sweat in it a little bit. Put it under the sun for a little bit.”

Blaze Alexander takes his glove prep a step further.

“When I first get my glove, I literally beat the shit out of it with a bat,” Alexander said. “I’m just beating it up. Everywhere, outside. I know that’s not how it’s going to end up forming but it breaks the leather in. And then from there, honestly, I do a simple flare, put the thumb out and a little bit on my pinky, and then it’s repetition, Catch, catch, catch. How I catch is how I want it to form.”

Just as no two players are the same, no two ways to break in a glove are the same. But the consensus around Baltimore’s clubhouse is there is no substitute for playing catch — even if there’s a microwave or shaving cream to be used on the glove first.