Baseball gloves are built to last for years, but the laces holding them together don’t always cooperate. I’ve had a rawhide lace pop mid-inning more than once, and nothing kills a good defensive stretch faster than a glove that won’t close right.
A professional glove shop can charge you $60 to $100 for a full relace job. But you can do that same task at home for a fraction of the price. How? With a baseball glove repair kit and a little patience.
Relacing a glove yourself isn’t as hard as it looks. I’ve dropped a step-by-step video guide near the bottom of this post if you want to jump straight there. But first, let’s talk about the repair kits you’ll actually need for that job. And if your glove just needs conditioning rather than new laces, my guide on reviving an old glove with oil is worth a look before you pick up a needle.
Here are the 4 best baseball glove repair kits I trust for emergency lacing fixes:
Wilson A2000 Baseball Glove Care Kit
The Wilson A2000 Glove Care Kit is basically a first-aid kit for your glove. It ships in a protective leather case that keeps everything organized, which is more than I can say for the shoebox I used to store my own lacing tools in.
Inside you’ll find both black and tan rawhide lace, an awl, cutters, lacing tools, glove oil, a brush, and threading needles. That’s everything you need to relace, revive, or reshape a glove in one box, plus an instruction booklet if you’ve never done this before. It’s the most complete lacing kit on this list, and the Wilson name means the tools are built to hold up over repeated use.
Markwort Deluxe Pro Relacer Kit
The Markwort Deluxe Pro Relacer Kit covers most of the same ground as the Wilson kit. It comes with three 72-inch rawhide laces, a U-wire needle, a steel lacing tool, and a leather pouch to keep the pieces together. It’s currently priced in the low $30s, which puts it right in line with a full-featured pro kit.
It skips the glove oil and brush you get with the Wilson kit, and the pouch is a hardcover case rather than a protective leather sleeve. What it does include is a genuinely useful instruction guide written by John Mathes, a longtime professional relacer out of California. If you want a no-frills kit built specifically for lacing rather than general glove care, this is a solid pick.
Covey Sports Baseball/Softball Glove Lace Kit (Black)
Heads up: this pick has changed since I first wrote this post. Covey Sports’ lacing kits are no longer sold under the Rawlings name, they’re now branded straight as Covey Sports. The current lineup uses the same 3/16-inch American rawhide leather lace and comes bundled with an awl-style lacing needle.
This one isn’t a full tool kit like the Wilson or Markwort options. It’s built specifically for relacing, with 72-inch laces long enough to redo a full web and a needle to get the job done. Covey also sells extra lace packs separately in multiple colors if you want backups on hand, which is a nice touch if you’re the type who tears a lace every other season like I do.
Franklin Sports Dr. Glove Premium Lacing Repair Kit
I swapped out the old generic pick that used to sit in this spot for the Franklin Sports Dr. Glove kit, which is a name you’ll actually recognize on store shelves. It runs about $27.99 and includes two 72-inch pieces of leather lacing plus an easy-grip lacing needle designed to thread through the lace without you fumbling with a separate tool.
It works on fielder’s gloves and catcher’s mitts alike, and the lacing comes in multiple color options depending on what matches your glove. For beginners who just want a straightforward relacing kit without a full toolbox of extras, this is the one I’d point you to.
Why You Should Keep a Baseball Glove Repair Kit Around
You won’t need a repair kit every season, but torn laces happen more often than you’d think, especially on gloves that see heavy use. When a lace goes, your glove stops closing right and starts costing you plays. As I mentioned earlier, a shop repair can run you up toward $100. A repair kit, on the other hand, typically costs somewhere between $10 for a basic lace-and-needle pack and $35 for a fully loaded kit with tools and a case. That’s a trade worth making if you play regularly.
How to Relace a Baseball Glove
Relacing a glove is easier than it looks once you’ve watched it done. Here’s a video that walks through the process step by step.
Conclusion
Keeping a relace kit in your bag is a lot like keeping a first aid kit at home. You hope you never need it, but you’ll be glad it’s there when a lace snaps before a game. For more on keeping your glove game-ready between repairs, check out my full guide on how to take care of a baseball glove, and make sure you’re oiling it at least once a season to keep the leather from drying out and cracking around those new laces.
With 4 years of Division II experience, a .272 career batting average, .410 on-base percentage, and 7 home runs, I’m now in my fifth season. I’ve played baseball since age 3, alongside future MLB Draft picks, and I aim to pursue a career in baseball professionally, be it playing, coaching, or scouting.