Sanitaries and Stirrups
“Just Thinking"
I was watching the Giants play the Mariners the other night, yeah, I know, I'm a glutton for punishment. When the Mariners' first baseman came up to bat, I had to do a double take. His look was so unique that I immediately grabbed my phone to find out who he was. It turned out to be Josh Naylor, once I looked him up, I remembered seeing him during last year's playoffs, but on this night, it was his appearance that really caught my attention. Naylor is a big, heavy-set guy with a scruffy beard, and he looked like he had assembled his uniform randomly from different eras of baseball fashion.
He was wearing a multi-colored headband under his helmet, a baggy jersey, and his baggy pants were pulled up above his knees. He wore solid-colored socks, probably compression tights extending all the way up, like Heliot Ramos. To top it off, he had on black cleats with thick white soles that extended up the sides, that looked like a pair of slip-on Skechers.
The whole package was impossible to ignore; he looked like a middle-aged guy playing beer league softball. He proceeded to slash a single into right field then steal second. My quick takeaway? Looks can be deceiving. This guy’s got game.
So, this got me thinking: if you just looked at the first basemen in the Giants games this week, the styles varied dramatically. Josh Naylor’s look reflects a newer trend that seems to be gaining popularity around the league. Then you have Vladimir Guerrero Jr. with the Blue Jays, whose baggy pants are so long that they cover the backs of his spikes. On the other end of the spectrum is Bryce Eldridge, who wears his pants just below the knees with solid black socks pulled all the way up.
Judging by what we saw at the All-Star Game, Eldridge’s style seems to be the most popular look in today’s game. One thing is certain: the variety in player style is a major departure from the traditional professional baseball uniform. Between the different pant lengths, multicolored arm sleeves, spikes, headbands and belts, the word uniform doesn’t seem to mean what it once did. These days, it often feels like the only truly uniform part of the uniform is the color of the team’s jersey and pants for that day’s game.
I was out to dinner this week with a bunch of buddies that I played high school baseball with and I posed the question, if you were playing today, how would you wear your pants. You have to remember, when we were playing, it was stirrups, short side in the front, high side in the back with sanitaries underneath. Guys like Andre Dawson and Vida Blue would get the stirrups pulled up high past the calf and had the top of their pants just above the curve of the stirrups. The Reds, The Big Red Machine, would wear the stirrups so short that you could just barely see the white socks beneath. Most players wore their stirrups so that the back was just touching the calf with the pants folder at mid shin, Will Clark and Willie Mays wore great socks.
Well, the consensus with the boys is that we would still go with the calf high stirrups and sanitaries beneath, but that got us talking about sanitaries, for those of you who aren’t familiar, the sanitary, it was paper thin sock, usually white, that came in a six pack. The end was sewed straight across with no heal, built for looks not comfort.
After lamenting how brutal they were, that there was no cushion or support, how fast they wore out and how you could feel every bump or flaw in your spikes, the question was asked why they were called sanitaries. Leave it to Trace, he said that it was for health reasons, because they were clean. There you go, they go back to a health scare in 1905, Cleveland’s star infielder Nap Lajoie was spiked in the shin, the fabric dye from his colored socks entered his blood stream causing sepsis and he nearly died. Teams introduced un-dyed, clean white socks next to the skin to block harsh chemicals of the colored socks.
This led to the creation of the stirrup. Wearing two full thick socks made cleats too tight and uncomfortable. Players cut the feet out of the colored socks, leaving a loop, showing the white under sock, eventually becoming baseball style.
For the first couple of decades of organized baseball, players wore full-length pants. Then in 1867, the Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first team to adopt knicker-style pants that stopped at the knee, allowing their colorful red stockings to be displayed.
Let me know what you think.
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