Earning Their Stripes

Well, at least now we know where Adidas got the idea for those Zubaz-esque stripes on its latest college hoops uniforms — or maybe where Zubaz got the idea in the first place. Behold the glory of the 1959 St. Agnes basketball team. “Imagine that in green and white!” says reader Ben Gray, who submitted the photo (and whose great-uncles Pat and Bob are seated in the front row). Surely one of you colorization types can make that happen, yes?

My only gripe, of course, is with the striped socks. Ben’s great-uncles had them drooping down at their ankles (can’t blame it on Maravich, who was only 12 years old at the time), and the other two guys in the front row either didn’t have them pulled up all the way or else the socks themselves weren’t long enough. A nettlesome fly in an otherwise pleasing ointment.

St. Agnes is now known as Springfield Catholic High School, whose teams are the Fightin’ Irish. Not sure if that’s what they were called back in ’59. “Green Zebras” seems more appropriate, no?

And as long as we’re talking stripes and high school basketball, here’s another school with striped warm-ups: ROCORI High School in Cold Spring, Minnesota. “They’ve been wearing these warm-ups since at least the mid-’70s, and the away shorts even had the same stripes up until 2001,” says Reece Hemmesch (who cruelly neglected to provide a photo of said shorts).

And speaking of striped basketball shorts, check out these satin beauties, which my longtime pal Robin Edgerton spotted on eBay. The striped side inserts are nothing new, but you don’t often see that element paired with the wider striped panels at the bottom — nice!

Finally, there’s this, which speaks for itself:

From James Crabtree’s cold, dead hands: It appears that children in Houston will get to be exposed to handgun imagery after all — you know, just like children everywhere else — because the Astros are poised to restore the revolver to their Colt .45s throwback jersey. As you can see from that press release (which was issued yesterday around noontime), MLB has rescinded its objection to the firearm and left the decision up to the ’Stros, who’ll announce their decision at some point today. Given that (a) team owner Jim Crane has already made it clear that he never wanted the gun removed in the first place and (b) Houston is not exactly a hotbed of gun control sentiment, I think we can all see where this is heading.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the lion’s share of the credit for this turn of events goes to Uni Watch reader James Crabtree, who spotted a small reference to the gun’s excision buried in the fine print of an Astros blog item a few weeks ago. He started writing a series of outraged letters, including one to me, which led to my own take on the story, and from there it kind of snowballed.

As for me, I’ve wanted the gun to be included on the jersey from the start — not because removing the gun is bad politics, but because it’s bad history (and even worse design). Glad to see it’s likely to be restored.

Incidentally, the first Colts throwback game is slated for April 10 — one month from tomorrow. So if the jerseys for that game were already made, now they’ll have to be revised. And if they weren’t already made, well, they have one month in which to make them. Either way, it proves the point that uniforms can be made (or altered) relatively quickly, despite all the talk we often hear about how “Oh no, we can’t do [whatever cool uni-related idea someone has come up with], because there isn’t enough time, the logistics are too complicated for such a short time frame,” etc.

Uni Watch Stirrups Club

By Comrade Robert Marshall

Ordinarily as Opening Day approaches I am knocking the ice out of my frozen brain-pan and saying things like “It has been a long, cold winter on the front lines of the hosiery wars.” However, this year that just is not true. It has been mild, to say the least, here in my remote cabin getaway at the foot of Mount Lajoie. The weather has been so temperate that it got the hamster at my rusty wheel thinking about the role of hosier in the broader culture. For instance, were there people in the 1950s who bucked the single-mindedness of the era and found stirrups to be not just functional but sexy? Thankfully, the answer appears to have been yes. But I guess that isn’t too surprising, given the awesome nature of footless hosiery. The real question is, did the men in the gray flannel suits pull up their stirrups one leg at a time for work on Fridays? Again, turns out they did.

Enough of my nonsense, let’s get on with the first stirrup offerings of the year without further ado. We’ll start with something special for our pied piper Paul, who strongly suggested (read: demanded) that the Revolution would do well to offer the stirrups shown in this Harlem Globetrotters uniform. In addition, the Revolution will offer some re-releases of past favorites. These can be found in our à la carte menu, which also features re-stocks of some designs that had previously been listed as sold out.

Two important points of order: First, I have tried to simplify things by rolling shipping and handling into the list price. And the Revolution can now be found on Twitter (grumble grumble), at @stirrup_rvltn.

As always, full ordering instructions and additional information can be found at our Revolutionary headquarters.

From each according his stirrvp,
To each according his strype,
Comrade 91200

ESPN reminder: In case you missed it yesterday afternoon, my latest ESPN column, about a sensational uni-related program being undertaken by the Padres, is available here.

Uni Watch News Ticker: New logo for US Speedskating (from Ray Barrington). … New mask design for James Reimer. “At first glance, meh, it’s another artistic goalie mask, we’ve seen it 1000 times before,” says Ryan Connelly. “But upon further review, check out the ‘cat’s eye goalie mask’ autobot logo on the left side — super clever!” … The Chicago Express have come up with what James Huening describes as “possibly the worst a St. Paddy’s Day jerseys I’ve ever seen, in any sport.” … Brady Phelps posted screen shots of Daniel-san wearing a Chargers jersey in The Karate Kid. … “I noticed something unusual while watching the CONCACAF Champions League quarter-finals game between my hometown Toronto FC and L.A. Galaxy,” writes Tim Chiu. “Major League Soccer jerseys normally have an MLS logo patch on one sleeve and either a Canadian or United States national flag on the other sleeve. For CONCACAF Champions League matches, the MLS patch should be replaced by the Champions League patch while the national flag patch should in theory be left intact. (This is also true for UEFA Champions League matches where say, Manchester United plays Real Madrid — they will not have the Premier League patch and La Liga patches visible on their jerseys at all.) But during the Toronto/L.A. game I noticed the jerseys that Beckham and company wore had an MLS patch on one side, a Champions League patch on the other, and no national flag patch. On the other hand, Toronto FC got it right by having the CONCACAF Champions League patch and the Canadian national flag.” … Many readers have noted that the Peyton Manning press conference featured a lecturn with a blue Colts helmet icon. Not sure that it really means anything. Anyone know if the Colts have used this same graphic in the past? … “Cool video and pics from the University of Utah’s 1944 NCAA championship team,” writes Bill Trovinger. “Color on Color in the era of black-and-white TV didn’t quite work (you can really see it in the pictures). I’m assuming it was red (Utah) vs. green (Dartmouth), but I have no proof of that.” … “A friend who’s an NC State alumn showed me this web site of NC State cartoons,” writes Michael Evangelista. “They were published in the student newspaper while the artist was there, from 2007 until 2011. Each year he had a different style, but I like the ones from 2011 the best.” … Have we ever had a tug-of-war item in the Ticker? We do now. Check out the uni-notable bit in the caption (big thanks to my ESPN editor Dave Wilson). ”¦ Dig this: Maple Leafs players who volunteered for WWII trained in their hockey sweaters! Guess nobody told them that anything military-related has to be camo-patterned (from Brandon Roberts). ”¦ “I took a photo during one of my son’s freshman football games two years ago in which there were three different boys wearing the same number,” says Phillip Wells. “I know it’s common on sub-varsity football to see two of the same number, but three was pretty impressive.” ”¦ Ben Traxel was driving through eastern Kansas recently when he spotted a school with a rather familiar logo. Note that their main color is even purple! ”¦ CBS reporter Bruce Feldman had an amusing take on the new Baylor uniforms (from David Cline). ”¦ Cool throwbacks worn last night by Nebraska. ”¦ New uniforms and logos for the York Revolution (from Alan Poff). ”¦ Cool infographic about the 2011 NFL season (from Benjamin Harris). ”¦ Ricko came across several good photos, including Bobby Bonds posing with the caps of all the teams he’d played for, a good view of the Reds’ drop-down NOBs, and an unfortunate episode in the annals of baseball headbandery. ”¦ Here’s a good historical overview of Auburn’s football uniforms (from Jeff Hunter). ”¦ Ben Bishop, recently traded from St. Louis to Ottawa, was still wearing his Blues mask when he made his Sens debut on Tuesday. Last night, however, he’d switched to a plain white mask (from Ryan Raymond). ”¦ Several readers raised an eyebrow over the third-to-last graf of this story, which reads: “[Derrick] Rose and [Dwight] Howard have praised each other recently and implied they would be open to being teammates. Both have endorsement deals with Adidas, and an executive with Adidas said the shoe company would have no problem with them being on the same team.” Aw, isn’t that nice of Adidas? What a nice bunch of douchebags they are. ”¦ Casey B, who didn’t give his last name, noticed an Oilers player with the TaylorMade logo on his stick. Yes, that’s Taylor Hall in the photo — Taylor Hall, TaylorMade, get it? — but he’s not the one who was holding the TaylorMade stick. He’s holding the black stick in his right hand, and the TaylorMade stick was being held by the player sitting next to him (possibly Ryan Nugent-Hopkins). So why is a golf logo appearing on a hockey stick? I took the highly ambitious step of Googling the words “TaylorMade hockey stick” and came up with the answer. … New field design for the Bengals.