Mount Pleasant Police Officer Helps Pro Baseball Family Develop Special Glove

With a love of baseball in their hearts and having had many bruised hands themselves from playing, Frank Jr., Lee and Jason Jaramillo designed the Forceout Glove to keep players in the game.

But looking past the passion of baseball, the Jaramillos are a baseball family and Forceout is a family-run company, owned primarily by Jason and Lee.

Oldest brother, Frank Jr., a police officer with the Mount Pleasant Police Department, also helps run the company in an advisory position. 

Jason currently is a catcher in the Houston Astros system, and Lee was a catcher in 1998 for the Milwaukee Brewers. The two brothers own Forceout Glove. A fourth brother, Alexis, didn't play baseball.

"When he was growing up, he was more into computers and video games," Lee said. "Playing baseball just wasn't his thing."

With the three oldest brothers being baseball players, they knew how rough playing America's pastime is on your hands. So with Forceout, they sought to make a protective glove that players could use under the mitts that did a better job of alleviating the problem that what they had used.

Becoming a baseball family

Growing up in Caledonia with the love of baseball, which was instilled in them by their father, Frank Jaramillo Sr. who emigrated from Mexico. He played semi-pro baseball in Mexico and played in the Latin Leagues in Milwaukee when they were growing up. 

Frank Jr. and Lee often went with their father to play in the league when they were 13- and 14-years-old.

"We were way over our heads at first and we got outplayed a lot, but we quickly learned to adapt," Frank said. "I think playing with older players helped a lot."

Frank Sr.'s entrepreneurial spirit rubs off

Starting a new venture seemed like a natural risk for the Jaramillo brothers because of watching how hard their father worked. Frank Sr. owns Jaramillo Contractors in Caledonia and he’s been in business for over 30 years. He started his business by driving his dump truck to worksites and asking if they wanted to use him.

“Seeing him wake up everyday, with no real road map… he taught us that you have put yourself out there, don’t be afraid to ask questions and don’t be afraid to sound like you don’t know what you are doing,” Frank said.

But just because you aren't afraid, doesn't mean you won't fail and that's something Lee expected.

“In my mind, everything was going to fail, because it always has… but you just gotta keep going because one of the projects will eventually work,” Lee said.

A product for baseball players made by baseball players

Being catchers, Jason and Lee came up with the idea of making a different kind of glove to address a common problem baseball and softball players have -- bruises on their hands.

And a lot of thought went into the design of the protective glove, primarily because Frank, Jason and Lee knew what was missing from the other gloves they had worn since they both played professional baseball. They would get bone bruises from where the ball hit their hand, even though they were wearing a baseball mitt and a leather glove underneath. They knew the padding needed to be substantive and strategically placed, but not obstructive to how the player’s hand moved.

The leather they use is called Pittards leather, which is used in a lot of high-end shoes and sporting goods and they wanted that because the material breathes better. The glove also has three fingers missing, which allows the player to feel the mitt, Lee said.

“The less you have on the better. If you have skin on leather, then you know that you are part of the game,” Lee said. “If you have it fully covered, then you don’t feel like you are part of the glove and players want to feel like you are always part of your equipment.”

Once they designed the glove, Jason introduced the gloves to some of his team members during spring training in March and he convinced other players on the team to use them.

“Protective equipment is a big industry, but no one had come up with a glove that met all of the needs that players had,” Lee said.

As a result, Lee, Jason, and Frank knew that they weren’t afraid to fail.

Sales of the Forcout glove have been going well, even though they were only introduced a few months ago, and because of that success Lee has had to set his other job as a commercial real estate developer aside.