OT: Baseball historians -- a couple questions

[whitehse]

One of my favorite shows of all time is the series HBO did some years back called "When It Was a Game." This show featured home movies of different baseball era's and I remember seeing many times that players well into the 1950's would toss their gloves on the field while heading back to the dugout. I seem to recall this practice stopped in the mid to late 50's.

I have never heard that the gloves were available for the other team to use. I have heard many stories from former players where they would pull pranks on the other players by leaving various items in opponents gloves like frogs, and other objects.