New Uni Watch column on ESPN.com today, and it’s all about baseball pants pockets. While researching the article, I queried the membership of the Society for American Baseball Research to see if they knew of any good stories about players keeping various items in their pockets. I got lots of good responses — too many to include in the ESPN piece. But the stories are too good to waste, so I’m posting them here:
• From Wayne McElreavy: “Supposedly Gates Brown was once about to devour a hot dog when he was called upon to pinch-hit. He stuffed the dog in his pocket, then got mustard and/or ketchup on his uniform when he slid into a base.” This account is backed up here.
• From Jared Wheeler: “Nellie Fox use to keep a red hankerchief in his back pocket, with about a quarter of an inch showing.” You can sort of see it here (that’s Fox on the right, and it looks like Luis Aparicio has something in his pocket too), although apparently his handkerchiefs weren’t always red.
• From Scott Merzbach: “Bob McGee’s book The Greatest Ballpark Ever: Ebbets Field and the Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers has an anecdote about Frenchy Bordagaray getting tagged out on a play in which he didn’t slide, because he had cigars in his back pocket.”
• From former big-leaguer Dave Baldwin: “Many pitchers in the 1960s and ’70s kept a rosin bag in their hip pocket. This was perfectly legal, and saved them wasted energy in bending over to pick the bag off the mound after each pitch. Some pitchers kept a bag of talc — from where the umpires stood, talc and powdered rosin looked much the same, so the pitcher merely touched his two pitching fingers on the bag to cover them with a layer of the slippery talc. The whiteness of the fine powder was hard to see on the white ball, and most of it flew off when the ball smacked into the catcher’s mitt. The ump never suspected. Pitchers called this a ‘dry spitter.'”
• Frank Vaccaro came up with a bunch of 19th-century examples: “Whenever Davy Force caught the last out of a game, he always nonchalantly put the ball in his pocket and walked off the field. Sadie McMahon, an 1890s pitcher, carried ‘lamp-black’ in his back pocket to darken new balls. Ed Daily, of the 1880s, pitched with a handkerchief hanging out of his back pocket, something that may have been in vogue for many players at that time. John Grim always batted with a miniature wood bat replica in his pocket for good luck.”
• Pockets have even figured in injuries. On Sept. 21, 1923, Red Sox rookie Clarence Blethen put his false teeth in his back pocket and ended up biting himself in the backside when sliding into second base. And Bill Nowlin, co-author of Tales from the Red Sox Dugout, quotes the following account from Mickey McDermott, who played in the 1940s and ’50s: “I hit a triple once with the Red Sox. I was running like hell and I slid into third and I had been smoking down in the dugout before I came up, and I’d put a pack of matches in my back pocket, and when I slid they caught fire and there was smoke coming out of my ass and the third baseman said, ‘You son of a bitch, you can really run!’ The smoke was going like a flamethrower and I was yelling, ‘Yoww!’ I had a blister on my ass like an apple.”
• And then there are these two stories, which Uni Watch will allow to speak for themselves. From Dave Baldwin: “Another interesting back-pocket item was a pistol carried by an outfielder in winter ball in Venezuela in the early ’70s. I can’t remember who the player was. Apparently the pistol-packing player had made some local enemies and was prepared for a ballpark shoot out. I imagine that made his teammates a little uneasy.” And from Merritt Clifton: “Twice I’ve been playing ball various places when an opposing player lost a handgun from his pocket, once while rounding second and once while rounding third. The time the guy was rounding second, I was in centerfield and overheard the discussion as the shortstop handed back the gun when the runner retreated to the bag:
“Hey man, you lost your gun.”
“No problem. I’ve got another in my sock.”
“Whatcha doin’ with those out here?”
“Dangerous neighborhood, man.”
Big, big thanks to all the SABR members who responded.
Uni Watch News Ticker: Throwback news: The Mariners will be dressing up as the 1969 Seattle Pilots on July 9th. … The University of Nebraska-Omaha’s hockey team is holding a design contest for a 10th-anniversary logo. … Badger State report from Uni Watch Wisconsin bureau chief the Rev. Nørb, who writes: “At the Father’s Day Brewers/Indians game, my eagle-eyed brother pointed out that Brewers middle reliever Geremi Gonzalez was wearing a regular Brewers batting helmet, as opposed to the (obviously quite superior) retro Sunday throwback ball-in-glove logo helmets that everyone else was wearing.” … Gabe Kapler has worn batting gloves for most of his career, including his stints with the Tigers, Rangers, Rockies, Red Sox, and in Japan. But Uni Watch Lifetime Achievement Scholar Mark Mihalik notes that when Kapler made his season debut with the Red Sox earlier this week, he was gloveless — apparently the first time he’d batted without gloves since briefly experimenting with the bare-handed style in spring training of 1998. … Latest Japanese baseball observation by Uni Watch Far East Consultant Jeremy Brahm: The Seibu Lions’ shoes used to have stripes that matched their uniform colors. … Bill Blevins alertly caught a few screen-grabs of Mariano Rivera preparing for his first career regular-season at-bat. “He was originally was wearing Jeter’s helmet, but within a minute the equipment staff had found what appears to be a new helmet with Mariano’s 42.” … This trend of ballplayers removing the elastic from their pant cuffs is getting way out of hand. … Toronto’s Jason Frasor was still wearing the MLB Father’s Day ribbon on Tuesday night (good catch by Michael Murray). … Interesting footwear note from Chris Murphy, who’s alerted Uni Watch to these grass-patterned soccer shoes, which create sort of a camouflage effect (except, of course, for the Puma logo striping).
Incidentally: I usually like to be available on the day an ESPN column runs, but I’m heading off to this afternoon’s Mets/Reds game, and I’ve got post-game plans too, so I won’t be around today to respond to comments and e-mails. Talk amongst yourselves and all that.
I coach a youth baseball team and noticed one of my players had a Mr. Freezee in his back pocket last year while playing Right Field.
Not many teams have thought to combine royal, kelly and red. But the Seibu Lions did — because that’s their owner company’s corporate colors. Even though Seibu’s now primarily royal and white — with some silver and black trim thrown in — you can still see the royal/kelly/scarlet scheme on Seibu buses in Japan.
You can buy Rawlings elastic-less baseball pants at almost any baseball supply place.
Here are a pair from Baseball Express:
link|0/index.pro
Note that those baseball pants are actually advertised as “unfinished”…
column’s up…
I knew a kid playing high school ball that kept grass from every field their team had played on since his first game as a freshman. He would take it out after the game and put it in a plastic bag. We did a little article on it for a school paper once. The kid was nuts though.
[quote comment=”1289″]I knew a kid playing high school ball that kept grass from every field their team had played on since his first game as a freshman. He would take it out after the game and put it in a plastic bag. We did a little article on it for a school paper once. The kid was nuts though.[/quote]
nothing to do with pockets, but all to do with grass. a friend of mine played college football many years ago. recently his college built a new stadium, and he went to the final game at the old place (where he played his games). post game, after every one left, he got a grounds crew to help him take many square feet of the fields sod. he took it home and re-sodded his front yard with the field grass.
Editors note: the Brewers’ pitcher who wore the wrong helmet was former Met Jeremi Gonzalez.
Anyone see the Rice – OSU CWS game last night? The Beavers wore these great unis. They looked like old school off white (cream?)throw-backs. Real nice look.
Yup, and meanwhile Rice wore hideous unis.
link
Get rid of the shoulder stripes and put that massive CWS patch on one of the sleeves, and you got a winner.
Mark you are right about the Rice jerseys. What works for football doesn’t work for baseball. Not a big fan of wearing solid color jerseys anyway. The are OK for batting preactice but not for game use.
I used to chew tobacco and during games I used to put the can of tobacco in my back pocket. One game while sliding into second base the plastic Skoal can broke to pieces and the tobacco spilled everywhere inside my pants pocket. Since tobacco was expensive and was ruined as a result of the slide, I stopped putting it in my back pocket and just kept it in my bat bag on the bench.
This “flappage” issue is rampant at the “Guys Who Can’t Let it Go” level as well. In our link (which sounds vaguely pornographic), we have players who do this as well. However, the time honored tradition of yelling “Turn signal on!” usually fixes the problem…
One postive note from the U.S.-Ghana game this morning. Play-by-play man Dan (Dave?) O’Brien mentioned that in the time between the final friendly and the first World Cup game, Ghanian keeper Richard Kingson dropped the ‘t’ from Kingston, making his new shirt accurate and the pre-Cup rosters incorrect. Finally, closure!
link
In Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, he said Rico Carty didn’t trust clubhouse guys, so he used to keep his wallet and valuables in his pocket.
I couldn’t find a picture of it, but I remember a Red Sox game from last year when Manny Ramirez went out into the field with a Poland Spring water bottle. Instead of getting it off the field he just stuck it in his back pocket and played the inning that way.
sorry – next time I’ll read the column first.
About the soccer jersey fonts pointed out at the bottom of the column. I know that the English Premier League (EPL) standardizes the font used on the back of jerseys, the only difference being black or white with opposite outlines. I think because it makes them more distinguishable for the refs. Many examples here:
link
The one exception is Arsenal. This past season they altered their unis to a great throwback look in honor of their longtime home stadium Highbury’s last season. They were able to wear gold letters and numbers on their home kits to match the gold trim elsewhere on the uni (namely the badge outlines, logos and socks):
link
An oddity though, is that when the EPL teams go play in the Champions League tournament, the font changes since it is unregulated in that tournament (to my knowledge). The worst example I’ve seen is Manchester United:
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link
link
I don’t know about teams from other leagues (Serie A, Bundesliga, La Liga, etc.) whether they regulate fonts or not and if it also changes at the Champions League. It’s just that the EPL’s cases are most obvious.
I forgot that Newcastle United (subject of the movie GOAL!) has gold numbers as well to stand off of the black and white stripped home kits. You can see it near the bottom of this page:
link
In the past, they’ve blocked out the number against the stripes:
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And used royal blue:
link
Juventus has a similar situation. They’ve blocked out:
link
link
And used other colors:
link
They also use a pink or salmon:
link
link
OK, I’m done…
brazil are wearing an interesting combo today…they yellow shirts with white shorts and socks…though it’s not their usual garb, doesn’t look too bad.
on second thought, the do look a little amatuer. perhaps it’s the pairing of yellow and white…
I think they’re having to wear the white shorts because Japan is wearing all blue. Could be wrong on this though…maybe we should consult the pdf file mentioned in the Page2 article.
but usually they go with the blue/white combo…maybe they stayed with the yellow tops out of superstition?
paul is seeing a good game today…
david wright with 2 bombs still with his link and pedro throwing 2 hit baseball through 6 with his link.
How about those new Anaheim Mighty Ducks unis. Black with bronze, orange, white and green trim at home, and white with bronze, orange and green trim away. C&C?
How about those new Anaheim
MightyDucks unis. Black with bronze, orange, white and green trim at home, and white with bronze, orange and green trim away. C&C?NOTE: This is an edit from a previous post.
Let’s not forget that Bump Bailey also kept cigars in his back pocket…
I loved the pockets on the throwbacks worn by the Pirates and Indians earlier this year, mentioned on the blog. They consisted of a dark flap on the lighter colored pants.
The no-elastic pants really are hideous. You might as well send them out there in blue jeans or those warm-up pants they wear in basketball.
[quote comment=”1318″]but usually they go with the blue/white combo…maybe they stayed with the yellow tops out of superstition?[/quote]
According to FIFA’s uniform guide:
Each team shall wear its official colours as declared on the official entry form during a preliminary round competition match (see Annex B). If, in the opinion of the referee or match commissioner, the two teams’ colours might cause confusion or prove unsuitable for television broadcast, the host team will wear its official kit while the visiting team will wear either its reserve kit or a combination of both.
Yup the above post pretty much explains it. Pretty much you can’t have the same colour shirt, shorts, or socks. I remember an English Premier League game either last year or 2 years ago where the visiting team did not bring alternate socks as their main ones were the same colour as the home teams socks, so they had to where the home teams alternate socks. I can’t remember witch teams were involved, but the away team ended up with a yellow top, white shorts, and red socks.
[quote comment=”1326″]How about those new Anaheim
MightyDucks unis. Black with bronze, orange, white and green trim at home, and white with bronze, orange and green trim away. C&C?[/quote]“Hideous” is the first thing I thought of when I saw them, but I’m definitely interested in hearing Professor Uni’s take on it.
[quote comment=”1299″]This “flappage” issue is rampant at the “Guys Who Can’t Let it Go” level as well. In our adult baseball league (which sounds vaguely pornographic), we have players who do this as well. However, the time honored tradition of yelling “Turn signal on!” usually fixes the problem…[/quote]
I’m actually surprised that Paul never made reference to the “turn signal” thing. I’ve heard that and “blinker” said more than anything else. As a matter of fact, during my college ball season this spring, once when our center fielder was up at bat, I yelled, “LEFT BLINKER!”
While the pitcher was going through his windup, he asked the ump for time, got it, and then promptly tucked his left pocket in as the pitcher, then pretty pissed off, threw a strike. Our whole team busted up laughing… it’s embarrassing to have your “turn signal” on, but not so much that you need to stop an at-bat.
Re: the new Ducks digs–I’m going to guess that you’re not too keen on the predominance of black, especially in their link. Personally, I don’t love it (though I do like the orange piping), but I am glad to see them finally shake the ‘Mighty’ and the cartooniness.
Another interesting pocket mystery… players have always kept batting gloves in their pocket, but some, like Nomar Garciaparra, take it to the next level:
link
Nomar, dating back to his glory days with the Sox, has always had a pair (not just one, but two gloves) in his back left pocket, even while hitting. I looked into this a little further, and I discovered that they’re not even gloves that he ever actually wears:
link
They’re apparently his Mizuno hold-onto-while-I-run gloves. Likely just another superstition of his–this is a guy who once wore adidas spikes with a Reebok flap (before adidas owned Reebok) for no other conceivable reason than good luck:
link
Anyone see Pedro with the High Scoks today?!
I love it!
The “hold-onto-while-I-run gloves”is not a superstition, If you pay attention you’ll see many, many players doing this (albeit they genreally take off the ones thay just hit with) but the reason is: You are less likely to break a finger sliding if you are HOLDING something.
Correct about the not breaking a finger business, but 99% of the players who hold on to the gloves take them off after they bat, and then hold on to them. The other 1% is Nomar, who apparently has a special reserve pair JUST to hold onto.
Thats the first time i’ve seen Pedro with high socks, love it! Paul picked a great game to go to..
great game today; i was sitting on the field level.
but it was really hot.
as far as the premiership (and other leagues for that matter) goes, you will notice that at the base of the numerals, you will find the logo of the league. while playing outside of the league (uefa cup, etc.) you will find not only the same typeface without the league logo, but also other typefaces as well.
as far as holding gloves goes, im almost positive that while deion sanders (and maybe corey sawyer)was in college, he not only had his recievers gloves on, but i think he also had a pair velcroed (sp?) around his pant loops as well.
Sorry this doesn’t have to do with baseball pockets…but, I was wondering if anyone knows what the heck the catcher for the Oregon State baseball team has on the front of his mask. It looks like masking tape, but I can’t figure out why he would do this. Thanks a lot, great blog and column.
Interesting font info about the Premiership teams and England’s World Cup team…
For regular season matches, it looks like all teams sport Optima for letters and numbers. I can’t place the font used during the EPL Champions matches.
The World Cup team wears a font called TheFA. It was designed by Jeremy Tankard specificially for the FA. It’s used as headlines on all web pages, in the England FA logo, and on the jerseys.
Not sure if the link will show up correctly, but it’s here:
link
Pocket-wise, it probably bears mentioning that Tim Raines (when he was with the Expos) used to slide head first…because he kept a vial of cocaine in his back pocket.
Not so awesome, but it bears mentioning.
Just read the column…you mentioned it. Shoulda read the column first, then the blog. Sowwy.
umm what exactly is happening in this picture
link
First off, hilarious pic above me, second off, the Ducks new uniforms aren’t THAT bad, and finally…I’m an avid reader…it’s my guilty pleasure…but INSIDE OUT POCKETS!?!? seriously, who cares. i love stirrups as much as the next guy, but if you have to resort to POCKETS just don’t even bother posting.
Sorry i looked again at the picture i just posted, the same one that was posted by Greg earlier and it is actually photoshopped so its not as funny as it was at first glance.
Little High sock action for the cards…mmmm…Perfect!
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[quote comment=”1370″]Little High sock action for the cards…mmmm…Perfect!
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They were actual stirups too! Close up on the HD feed for comcast.
And a 1 hitter in them too boot…too bad the one hit was the only run of the game.
Tex, I didn’t even notice that the pic was photoshoped until you called it out! I was totally focused in on the back of Christiano Ronaldo’s jersey to notice that Wayne Rooney wasn’t really propping himself up on his teammate in celebration. This is me embarrassed…
An interesting anecdote I thought of involving the World Cup. While thinking of the US strips, I realized that Italy has worn their all-blue kits for all three group games:
Ghana: link
USA: link
Czech: link
While thinking of how unique that was, I realized that quite a few others have done it too:
Portugal: link
Germany: link
Ecuador: link
Sweden: link
Netherlands: link
Ukraine and Spain (so far): link
Tunisia (so far): link
Now someone out of Group H has to crack because each team that has worn the same uni all three games it played has advanced. A true uni competition!
Side note:
The Croats wore blue socks once:
link
Japan wore white shorts once:
link
Neither advanced.
Coincidence?
Sorry, let me clarify what I meant in that last post.
I meant to say (in the second to last paragraph) that each team listed that has completed group play had worn the same uni combination in each of the three games. In Group H, Tunisia, Spain and Ukraine have each worn the same uni for both games they’ve played so far. Since only two of those teams in Group H will advance, it will be interesting to see if someone comes out in a different strip and what happens with who advances.
Hopefully that makes more sense…
When I played high school baseball in Pittsburgh, we used refer to a player with his pant pocket inside out as “Your turn signal is on.”
This is in regards to your ESPN article, I think Corey Patterson’s “wrench” might be a tool to tighten his cleats? Just a thought…
[quote comment=”1353″]Sorry this doesn’t have to do with baseball pockets…but, I was wondering if anyone knows what the heck the catcher for the Oregon State baseball team has on the front of his mask. It looks like masking tape, but I can’t figure out why he would do this. Thanks a lot, great blog and column.[/quote]
White athletic tape + top half of mask = sun shade like a baseball hat bill.
Old school with the tape and cool as heck.
[quote comment=”1290″][quote comment=”1289″]I knew a kid playing high school ball that kept grass from every field their team had played on since his first game as a freshman. He would take it out after the game and put it in a plastic bag. We did a little article on it for a school paper once. The kid was nuts though.[/quote]
nothing to do with pockets, but all to do with grass. a friend of mine played college football many years ago. recently his college built a new stadium, and he went to the final game at the old place (where he played his games). post game, after every one left, he got a grounds crew to help him take many square feet of the fields sod. he took it home and re-sodded his front yard with the field grass.[/quote]
Sounds a bit similiar, but saner. than what Japanese high school players do at the spring and summer national tourney. After the various teams lose players will scoop up some of the sacred-ground dirt at Koshien Stadium and take it home and smoke it….
Okay, the last part was a joke. I have no idea with they do with it but trust me…from playing a lot of baseball in Japan, their dirt is hard to get out of baseball pants. = D
[quote comment=”1400″]This is in regards to your ESPN article, I think Corey Patterson’s “wrench” might be a tool to tighten his cleats? Just a thought…[/quote]
To me it looks like he’s at the end of a pouch of chew and rolled up tightly for whatever goofy reason….er, ah, um, to make Paul guess what it is…= D
[quote comment=”1343″]Correct about the not breaking a finger business, but 99% of the players who hold on to the gloves take them off after they bat, and then hold on to them. The other 1% is Nomar, who apparently has a special reserve pair JUST to hold onto.[/quote]
Actually there was an OF with the Cubs, who was that, was with them a bit before Tuffy Rhodes showed up, lefty hitter, usually played LF, and got traded w/ the Yankess and played for them a bit too, used to wear so many gloves in his back pocket they looked like cheeseburgers and he already had a big booty. If it wasn’t late I know I’d come up with the dude’s name but I gotta hit the hay..
Just another one to add to the list of guys with flappage: link.
Speaking of Sammy, wouldn’t it be great if equipment managers kept a database of guys’ hat sizes from year to year?
In reference to the football fonts, The EPL teams do either wear the FA font without the FA logos for European tournaments, or they resort the the font stylings of the kit manufacturer. In the exmaples noted above for ManU, the font used on the blue altenate kit is the same used on the current Portugal National kit….both Nike. As for the post on Juventus and their striping issues, the pink/salmon offerings shown are their alternate kit, which this year is link. Their primary kit is still Black and white striped.