One of the many struggles of being a regular ballplayer is keeping your equipment in order. Compared to the rest of your baseball gear, though, the gloves tend to get dirty a lot sooner. There’s no way around it, unfortunately. And when it does get dirty, you will need to clean it if you want to make it last.

If you are a decent player who doesn’t mind spending some moolah towards a solid glove, then I would bet your glove is made of leather. But the problem here is that leather gloves can be quite tricky to clean. You can’t just run it under a faucet and rub it to your heart’s content. Using the right cleaning product is essential.

To make matters worse, while baseball glove manufacturers recommend not using leather cleaners on your baseball glove, they don’t specify what you should use either. So, people try out different things and usually have mixed opinions on what works best. One product that many people swear by is saddle soap.

And yes, you can use saddle soap on your baseball glove.

But what on earth is saddle soap? Does it really work? And will it damage your glove in any way? These are the questions that I will address in this article. And by the time I am through, you should know all about whether you can use saddle soap on a baseball glove. So, let’s hop in.

Is it Safe to use Saddle Soap on a Baseball Glove?

Saddle soap, for those who don’t know, is a product designed to clean, condition, and protect leather products. This compound is commonly used to clean leather horse saddles, and if you didn’t catch on by now, that’s where the name came from.

Now, if you break down saddle soap, you will find that it contains a blend of mild soap, a softening component like lanolin, and a preservative component like beeswax. Apart from horse saddles, it is also used to clean and condition leather boots or bags. It is a gentle cleanser and has little to no negative impact on the material.

Now take any baseball glove cleaner in the market and go down its list of ingredients. It’s a safe bet that you will find lanolin oil, the same oil used in saddle soap, as one of its key components. This is what makes saddle soap such a great alternative to clean your baseball leather gloves.

So, the short answer here is that, yes, saddle soap is perfectly safe to use on your baseball glove. But that doesn’t mean you should go overboard with its application. Applying too much oil to your glove can make it heavy, which will affect its quality negatively.

The best approach is to apply a bit of saddle soap on a clean cloth and gently rub it into the surface of your gloves. Once you cover the entirety of the glove, use a second clean rag to rub off the excess and let the glove rest. This will help remove any dirt or grime that your glove may have picked up over the week.

Wrapping Up

Whether you are trying to clean a moldy leather baseball glove or just trying to give it a quick touch-up, saddle soap can work wonders for you. It’s also much cheaper than the traditional oil designed specifically for baseball gloves. That being said, you shouldn’t overdo it.

As long as you keep things light and use them sparingly, saddle soap can be a good option to clean your baseball glove. Hopefully, this article answers your question and helps you keep your gloves looking clean and fresh. Good luck!