Does The Oregon State Catcher Have His Fingernails Painted Red

When the time comes to sit down, relax, and watch a practiced one-time-fashioned baseball, you may discover something out of the ordinary. Most of the time, if you lot take a closer wait at the catcher, they have their nails painted.

While catchers wearing smash smooth is not very common, it has become necessary for some catchers in the MLB. Why is that?

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Why exercise baseball catchers pigment their nails for games?

The reason catchers wear boom polish in baseball game games is to communicate with the pitcher more clearly.

In the MLB, the distance from the pitcher's mound to domicile plate is nearly 60 feet and 6 inches. As a result, the pitcher may have difficulty understanding the catcher'south hand signals. Thus, catchers opt to paint their nails or wear vibrant boom stickers to make their hands more visible.

Rocky Gale wearing nail polish during a 2019 Reds vs Dodgers game

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There are a few nail polish shades that catchers gravitate towards — white, yellow, orange, and neon variations of whatever color.

In the photograph above, former LA Dodgers catcher Rocky Gale is wearing orangish nail polish on his fingers during a 2019 confront-off against the Cincinnati Reds. The bright colour contrasts against their blue and white uniforms, allowing the pitcher to pick up the hand signals a lot easier.

Sometimes, the catcher's easily alloy in with their fingers.

Almost baseball teams have several uniforms that they wear sporadically throughout the flavour. At that place are domicile game uniforms, away game uniforms, throwback uniforms, and other variations where bailiwick of jersey and pants hues complement each other.

Considering of this, Baseball Training World reports, "All of these different mix-n-match combinations means there's a good run a risk that a catcher volition air current upwardly with a pair of baseball pants that but happens to blend in perfectly with their fingers." Wearing nail paint means this confusion can be avoided.

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How did the nail polish tradition begin?

Though it's difficult to trace back to the first time this practice appeared in baseball game, the quondam catcher for New York Yankees, Russell Martin, made headlines for his vivid orangish blast polish dorsum in 2011.

In an article from Newsday, Russell Martin spoke on his decision to paint his nails, saying he used to use Wite-Out, but that was a messy mail-game hassle. Somewhen, he switched to vivid nail shine colors, such equally orange.

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Source: Twitter / @KatieMo61

"There were a couple guys who had a difficult time seeing in jump training, and so I just took action in my own easily and got stuff washed," Russell stated.

Quondam Yankees pitcher A.J. Burnett shared his thoughts on Russell'southward decision, adding "He don't care. He'southward hither to exercise 1 thing, and that's [to] assist us win. If he's got to wear pink fingernail shine, he'll do it."