Baseball glove padding is made of both felt and leather. Felt padding is used in the finger region of gloves. Each finger stahl has felt padding that helps protect and reinforce gloves integrity. In palm section the gloves are padded with extra piece of leather and palm glue. Akadema is considered by many the master craftsmen of glove making. Here are couple videos on making gloves.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia states, "Many early baseball gloves were simple leather gloves with the fingertips cut off, supposedly to allow for the same control of a bare hand, but with extra padding."
In baseball gloves, the index finger has padding because it it the one most likely to get it. If you catch a ball just a little bit off, it is usually the index finger that takes brunt of the force. To prevent you from hurting your finger even more I would put your finger outside of your glove.
Softball gloves are made the same way Baseball gloves are. Companies like Akadema make both softball and baseball gloves. See video below on how gloves are made. http://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=KcGiBodC-Mo
Bag Gloves have harder padding and are usually cheaper. Make sure you do not spar with bag gloves.
Oven gloves are typically made of materials that are poor conductors of heat, such as silicone or cloth with insulated padding. This helps to protect the hands from being burned when handling hot objects in the oven.
Soccer goalie gloves differ from other sports athletic gloves because of the padding on the back of the glove to protect the metacarpals on the goalie's hand from breaking if the ball made contact with the back of the goalie's hand. These gloves are almost reminiscent of UFC training gloves except for the fact that the fingers are covered on soccer goalie gloves as well.
five
Because the padding protects there hands
Usually around five baseball gloves can be made from one cow hide.
To protect a player's hand when catching a ball.
Same as today...steerhide.
ShangHai China. P. R