Over the last 15-20 years, the stirrup sock has almost vanished from the baseball world.
Now, most MLB teams have their pants all the way down to their shoe tops, with nary a whiff of a stirrup sock visible.
my questions:
do teams and players still have to wear the stirrup sock underneath the long pant leg, since it is a part of the official uniform?
if it is not a part of the official uniform, what do teams like the Red Sox do? Their name is based on a red Stirrup sock, and some guys still like to show them, even if most do not.
If this was the NFL, there would be fines galore, but MLB seems to be much more lax in their enforcement. Unless there is no uniform dress code, in which case guys can wear whatever they want.
Does anyone know if the stirrup sock is gone, or if it is or was part of an official uniform dress code?
If it is part of the baseball uniform code, guys don’t have to wear them underneath their long pants, do they? That would seem rather silly.
There is no official rule mandating stirrup socks, and their general decline is largely due to the fact that they’re pointless.
The original purpose of the stirrup was to allow for the display of team colors while still having an athletic white sock on underneath, which, being more likely to get sweaty and gross, could be changed more often and was cheaper than the colored sock. That’s not really an issue anymore.
Is there a rule mandating knickers? Or whatever they call the below the knee length pants players have worn for over 100 years (minus the last 20)?
I agree that they don’t hold any functional value… However, to me they “look” better. They are more pleasing to the eye because the pants all bunched up at the top of a players shoe looks terrible. It looks like they aren’t the players pants, but for someone a few inches taller. In short, the players look sloppy, with baggy pants that you would see in a mall with a gang of high school kids looking “cool”. That’s not the look I personally like for a baseball team.
If there is no rule, why not just let the players wear sweatsuit pants? Is there any rule dictating the length of pants, or what someone can or can’t wear? I remember the White Sox wore those ridiculous shorts in the 70’s, and they were actually worse than the pajama pants thse guys are wearing today. But that’s because you can’t wear shorts in a sport where sliding is a key part of the game. (anyone that has played baseball and has lived with a “strawberry” on his leg for weeks because of a slide knows what I mean).
Saying they are pointless and were used because of cleanliness issues is no different than baseball teams wearing primarily grey uniforms on the road. This started because teams had trouble getting their uniforms laundered on the road, and grey units hid the dirt and dust better over the course of a weekend or week long road trip.
The key, though is that even though the stirrup sock has no functional value, it also doesn’t impede the player in any way from playing the game.
I find it interesting that there is no rule to tell a team how it should dress, other than probably making sure they all dress the same. But even this isn’t true today, because some players still opt for the stirrups, while others o. The same team wear the long pants look.
If you hae a link to somewhere that describes a baseball players official uniform, I’d appreciate a link. My google fu didn’t work the first time, so I’m off to try again.
The Baseball Hall of Fame has a whole section online about the history of uniforms. It may be helpful for this discussion. Stirrup socks were not part of the original uniforms and didn’t come along until the 20th century.