This probably has a factual answer or it may actually be debated, (there’s also the real possibility that this has already been answered in some thread somewhere … but I digress); however I figure the Game Room is the best place for this question …
Until recently … and by recently I mean I have no idea how long it’s been … all baseball players wore “stirrup socks” with knickers (pants legs to the knees). Now if you see a player sporting that look, it’s an abberation. My question is … who was the first baseball player to roll his pants legs down to his ankles and decide to keep them there.
If I were to hazard a guess, I might posit that it was a player in a cold-weather city, rolling them down to keep warm, liked the look and ran with it. But I get the feeling that it was actually someone who didn’t think the knicker look was cool enough and wanted to wear big-boy pants to play the game.
But in reality … I have no friggin’ idea who and why it was.
Can’t help you with who did this first, but I can tell you that the stirrup-sock look was the norm at least up until the early-to-mid 1980s, and that the long-pants look has been the norm for at least the past 8-10 years. My recollection (quite possibly incorrect) is that the amount of stirrup “shown” by players gradually decreased, until it was gone entirely.
Some photographic proof:
1982 Milwaukee Brewers team photo (note all the stirrups in the bottom row):
This article from 1989 claims that the first player to wear his pants longer was Willie Mays in 1960, although it sounds like he just lengthened his pants rather than taking them all the way down to the ankle. On the next page, it also claims that although clubs still had rules to show the socks, in reality showing more than an inch of sock was already rare.
I remember hearing that players started modifying the stirrup socks a while back to make the strap part shorter, and then making the pants longer. Just a fashion thing like baggy basketball shorts.
I am WAGGING here, but I think Barry Bonds took this to the level we are seeing today.
If I remember correctly, Bonds put stretchy material at the bottom of his pants to go underneath his spikes so his pants would never roll up. Sort of like stirrup pants.
Personally, I think this has been one of the worst sports fashion changes in my memory. Basketball shorts getting baggy was just fine, and I think they look better. But baseball pants should be of the knicker variety, and stirrup socks should be mandatory.
Is there any team out there that mandates the old-school stirrup sock look?
