Socks

TheOldMole
Jul 11 2006 11:13 AM

From Paul Lukas in the Times:

] Of this year’s 64 All-Stars, only five — Ichiro Suzuki, Barry Zito, Jim Thome, Alfonso Soriano and Brad Penny — routinely hike up their pants to expose a once-crucial element of the baseball uniform: the colored sock.

If you think baseball hosiery isn’t important, think again. Back in the early days, when uniform pants were essentially knickers, stockings were the primary way for a team to show its colors. Note that we don’t have teams called the Blue Caps or the White Pants — we have the White Sox and the Red Sox. And during the McCarthy era, when the Cincinnati Reds were concerned that their team name might be associated with Communism, the team’s owners officially changed the club’s name to the Redlegs — a name that wouldn’t work today because not a single Red exposes his hose.

Socks have also played a key role in baseball players’ expressions of sartorial style. If you played Little League, you probably remember the special feeling you had as you adjusted your stirrup socks, perhaps in exactly the same style as your favorite player. Indeed, the particular ratio of colored stirrup to white undersock was the standard visual calling card for generations of ballplayers. In his classic memoir “Ball Four,” Jim Bouton reported that many players sliced the bottoms of their stirrups and had extra fabric sewn in, so the pants could be stretched ever higher. That way, wrote Bouton, “your legs look long and cool instead of dumpy and hot.”

Nothing is dumpier than today’s baggy, full-length pants, which look like footie pajamas. While there are still a few high-pants holdouts, they’ve become increasingly rare, in part because of peer pressure. Mets third baseman David Wright wrote in his blog in May that the team’s veteran players gave him “a hard time” when he experimented with high pants for one game.

“I guess the general feeling is that the pants-up look is a high school or college type of style,” he wrote. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but there’s a high value on looking and acting like a professional in this clubhouse.”

The most interesting thing about Wright’s comment is that sock exposure is now seen as a youthful trend, when in fact it’s as old school as baseball gets. But sure enough, anyone watching last month’s College World Series saw a much higher proportion of players wearing their pants hiked up than in the Major Leagues. This could bode well for the next generation of big-leaguers — and for all of us who have to look at them — assuming “professionals” like Wright don’t talk them out of it.

But don’t blame the players. The real fault lies with Major League Baseball’s higher-ups, who are legendarily persnickety about everything from sleeve lengths (must be standardized within a given team) to handwritten cap inscriptions (forbidden under any circumstances) but have allowed pant cuffs to migrate southward with nary a peep, with disastrous results for the game’s hosiery heritage.

A bit of good news -- at the Renegades/Cyclones game, everyone on both teams showed sock.

Willets Point
Jul 11 2006 11:17 AM

Iubitul
Jul 11 2006 11:19 AM

I always loved how Bob Ojeda wore his.

TheOldMole
Jul 11 2006 11:25 AM

Interestingly, it's all one or the other -- the broken elastic look or the all-sock look. The stirrup look of the 60s and 70s -- really the best sartorial statement -- is completely gone. Does no one want to look like Roberto Clemente?