Drew Storen’s breaking ball is probably a slider, but for the purposes of this piece, let’s imagine he has a curveball. Sometimes called a hammer, or a yellow hammer, the curveball’s downward trajectory and velocity gap off the fastball serves to elicit balls that pound the ground.

Storen also has a literal hammer, designed to pound… gloves.

Play the game, and you’ve had to buy a new glove. Nothing feels less natural than forcing crinkly leather closed around a ball, at least not that first time.

Then you start pounding the pocket with your first, then you get a ball in there, then you wrap the glove around the ball and find the heaviest thing you can find to put on top of it (your mattress?). Maybe you get a little oil, maybe leave it in the sun, maybe wear it to school, all day.

Mike Matheny has a few ways he can break in your glove if you’re a Cardinals player.

Each of the orders are a little different. Some like a stiff thumb, others want the outside edge flared out a little. Matheny uses the cage and a mallet with a baseball-shaped head as his primary tools. He has clearance from the players to do anything he wants, but is holding some of the more elaborate techniques in reserve.

“I always put mine under water. I haven’t put these guys’ under water. They told me to do whatever. Most the catcher’s gloves I break in I put under water, just to remold the leather,” he said. “I haven’t been sleeping on it, but I used to do that. I used to hear ‘put it under your mattress’ and I don’t do that now. I would have some serious neck and back aches.”

That’s a curious mallet he references. Could be, his comes manufactured that way. Storen found a way to make it happen on his own, with a literal baseball duct taped to a rubber mallet.

“You use the ball side to hit the pocket,” pointed out the Reds reliever. “The other side is for the seams and the thumb.”

It’s a perfect tool, designed for one very specific operation, and so it was in demand at Reds camp. “Yo let me get that hammer thingy” came the refrain as new gloves filtered into the clubhouse. It doesn’t have a name yet, confirmed the righty, so hammer-thingy will do for now.

“But it does also double as a decent shake weight,” smiled Storen.