Everything about Baseball Uniform totally explained
A
baseball uniform is a type of
sportswear worn by
baseball players, and sometimes by non-playing personnel such as managers and coaches. Modern uniforms have the names and
uniform numbers of the players on them; color differences and insignia are mainly used to distinguish players from the two teams. A uniform includes a shirt, pants, shoes, socks and
cap, which all have details such as logos and colors.
The first uniforms, worn by the
New York Knickerbockers Baseball Club, were composed of blue woolen
trousers, white flannel shirts and straw hats. Since then, the uniform has changed dramatically, such as replacing straw hats with regular baseball caps and displaying the players last name.
Little League Baseball was founded by
Carl Stotz in
1939 when they started to use baseball uniforms in the little leagues.
History
Creation
In
1849 the New York Knickerbockers became the first team to use uniforms. Their uniforms consisted of white flannel shirts, wool pants and straw hats. In, uniforms and/or stockings involved different colors that reflected the different positions, sometimes. In and the
Detroit Wolverines and
Washington Nationals of the
National League and the
Brooklyn Bridegrooms of the
American Association added stripes to their uniforms.
Home and road uniforms
By the end of the 19th century clubs were customarily wearing different uniforms at home and on the road. It became standard practice to wear white at home and gray or another somewhat dark color on the road. In 1907, the
Brooklyn Superbas incorporated a blue pattern for their road uniforms. The
New York Giants later used a similar pattern. The more widely spaced uniforms, with more visible pinstriping, first appeared on several major league team uniforms in . In, the Giants added an almost "plaid" effect with a crossing of multiple fine lines of purple. During this time, another alternative for road uniforms was a solid dark blue or black material with white relief.
The 1937
Brooklyn Dodgers used tan as their away uniforms.
In 1963
Charles O. Finley changed his
Kansas City Athletics home and road uniforms with combination of gold and green. In the 1970s some teams used light blue for their road uniforms.
Pinstripes and numbers
Pinstriping on baseball uniforms created in the
19th century wasn't used very long in major and minor league play, but was brought back by the Brooklyn Bridegrooms in 1907, 1916 and 1917, respectively. During that time when the striped uniforms were made again, other materials for the baseball uniform were added, such as uniforms made of
satin.
The team most often identified with pinstripes would be the
New York Yankees. Legend has it that the stripes were adopted to make
Babe Ruth look slimmer. That story is a myth, as the Yankees had already adopted pinstripes several years before acquiring Ruth. But the Yankees pinstripes (on their home uniforms) have persisted and become a symbol of the Yankees, to the point where books about the Yankees often have pinstriped covers.
Numbers were first added to uniforms experimentally and sporadically. By the 1930s, they were common, in part for the purpose of encouraging scorecard sales. ("You can't tell the players without a scorecard!") The Yankees were among the first to assign numbers, initially based on their normal position in the lineup (Ruth 3, Gehrig 4, etc.) As players began to be associated with specific numbers, the ritual of "retiring" a number came into fashion.
The numbers were typically on the backs of the shirts, with the team name or logo on the front of the shirt. In 1952, the Dodgers were the first team to put numbers on front panels of their uniforms.
Further experimenting led to innovations such as the
Houston Astros of the 1970s and 1980s putting numbers on a front pants pocket as well as on the back of the shirt.
The use of names on the backs of the shirts, arched over the numbers, began in the late 1950s and gained broader acceptance over time, ironically undermining the purpose of putting numbers on the shirts, for example to sell scorecards.
Cap styles
Caps, or other types of headgear with eyeshades, have been a part of baseball uniforms from the beginning.
From the 1840s to the 1870s, players wore various types of hats including straw hats, boating caps, jockey caps, and even bicycling hats. By the 1880s, the "Chicago style" cap had become very popular. This style, also compared to a "cake box" or "billbox", often incorporated horizontal striping enhancing the layer cake look, and it remained popular through the 1890s.
By the early 1900s, the rounded top had become the primary fashion. The cake box style was still used by some teams, notably the
Philadelphia Athletics. The cake box style retains its prominence because of the A's frequent appearance in the World Series, ensuring that any comprehensive history of the Series would display that style.
Other teams would sometimes adopt the flat-topped cap, such as the Giants in 1916, and the
Pittsburgh Pirates in modern times, including their 1979 World Series championship, again ensuring lasting visibility.
The standard modern cap has changed very little in recent decades. Over time, a somewhat fuller crown larger sun visor has been developed. The basic purpose of the cap remains the same - to shield the wearer's eyes from the bright summer sun.
Shoes
In the late 19th century, soft but durable leather shoes were the preferred choice of baseball players. Soon, detachable spikes were designed and were seen multiple times until when they were prohibited. White shoes became popular, as well as solid reds and blues soon after.
As
artificial turf became prominent in baseball fields, modifications to footwear became necessary. Sporting goods companies began manufacturing shoes specifically designed for the new surface of playing fields. The soles of shoes had numerous small rubber bumps on them that provided good traction without harming the artificial turf. Shoes with plastic cleats made their appearance in the early 1980s.
In the 19th century and the first part of the 20th, baseball shoes were commonly black in color. The shoe height was just below the ankle bone to a basic low-quarter style by 1910. The Kansas City Athletics designed revolutionary white shoes in the 1960s. Up to the late 1960s, baseball shoes were found only in black or dark brown. Today, very few major leaguers wear color-matching shoes and there are hardly any all-black shoes.
Stockings
Cincinnati Red Stockings, the stocking colors of teams in the 1860s onward were a principal device in distinguishing one team from another (hence team names such as
Chicago White Stockings,
St. Louis Brown Stockings (or Browns), etc.). In 1900, stockings were made of heavy wool. They were of one-piece full-length (above the knee) construction. The
stirrup stocking, separate from the “sanitary” foot stocking, first came into usage in about . Striped or multi-tone stirrup stockings became widely used around and less common only a few years later. Except for a few "candy-cane” varieties (particularly by the Giants,
St. Louis Cardinals and
Washington Senators), striping was quite minimal during the 1920s and, in contrast, a revival of other sorts in the early '30s.
By the 1990s, new styles of close-trimmed pants legs made it possible for players to wear pants that ran clear to the shoetops, in lieu of the traditional
knee-breeches style that had prevailed for generations. This led to a violation of the literal concept of a "uniform", in that different players on a given team might wear knee-length and full-length pants on the field at the same time. Players such as
Manny Ramirez have taken this fashion trend to an extreme, wearing loose-fitting pants whose legs nearly lap under the heels of the shoes.
Meanwhile, players such as Alfonso Soriano continue to wear the traditional knee-breeches.
Graphics and logos
From the beginning,
graphic designs were used to identify teams. Often an Old English letter was worn on the chest. This style survives with the
Detroit Tigers and their gothic style "D" on their home shirts. Road jerseys were more likely to identify the city, as with the Tigers wearing the word "Detroit" on their road shirts.
As official nicknames gained prominence in the early 1900s (in contrast to media-generated and unofficial nicknames of prior generations), pictorial logos began emerging as part of the team's marketing. Some early examples include a small red tiger on the black cap of the 1901 Detroit Tigers, as they were officially the Tigers from the beginning; and a bear cub logo on the Chicago Cubs shirts by 1907, as that unofficial nickname was then adopted officially by the club.
In another famous example, the Boston Americans (an unofficial designation that merely distinguished them from their across-the-tracks rivals) adopted the Nationals' abandoned red stockings in, and have been the
Boston Red Sox officially ever since then.
By the 1930s, nearly every team had distinctive logos, letters or the team nickname on their home shirts, as part of the team's marketing. The trend of the city name on the road jerseys continued. In recent years, with team nicknames being so strongly associated with the clubs, logos that were once only used at home also turned up on road jerseys, in place of city names.
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