So, walking around the stores, I’m noticing more and more employees dressing up for halloween, which got me thinking about what would happen if the same happened amongst professional athletes.
Now, I’m not not sports much. The last game I actually watched of anything was the mens’ Hockey Gold in the last winter olympics, so I am totally unfamiliar with professional sports of any kind. Would it be within the rules for, say, an entire football team to get zombiefied for a match? Has it ever happened?
And now for the non-factual addendum: If they did it right, say they hired Tom Savini to make them look like some of the scarier decomposing monsters, would it have an impact on the outcome of the game?
Not that I’m aware of for Halloween. The National Football League allows various kinds of alternative jerseys, but they must be sanctioned by the league some time in advance. I’m not sure what the National Basketball Association’s uniform rules are, but I suspect they are similar to the NFL’s.
Major League baseball teams sometimes don special green duds for St. Patrick’s Day, which annually falls during spring training (baseball’s exhibition season). I know the Cincinatti Reds have worn green and white caps on St. Pat’s, and I’ve seen the New York Mets wear green and orange caps. I think both clubs also have used green jerseys, as well.
The pro sports that are played on Halloween: football and basketball, would likely fronw upon a team getting dressed up in a scary costume. They would all have to wear the same costume.
Yeah, it’s hard to see something that would be identifiable as a Halloween costume get sanctioned by the NFL as an actual uniform.
You certainly couldn’t have players wearing unsanctioned headgear like latex masks or the like in lieu of a helmet (and no player would want to wear such a mask under a helmet). Also, there could be nothing that would interfere with the standard padding.
An NFL team could likely get the league to approve a special black jersey … and maybe, just maybe, a special helmet logo. But the NFL can be pretty traditional about these things.
We weren’t pros, and it’s not really a sport, but my college marching band played a halftime show on Halloween in costume. We (the tubas) dressed in really tacky outfits (I wore lime green pants and a Swatch shirt striped with a slightly different shade of lime green). The baritone section (featuring the future Mrs. Cliffy) performed as a six-pack of Labatts.
Seems doubtful for professional teams playing a match that counted (non-exhibition).
Certainly has happened for amateur teams in recreational leagues or one-off tournaments. (I can testify from personal experience, you can actually run, cut and dive pretty well in a grass skirt. Though a coconut bikini can get in the way of throwing).
Be interested in the highest level of competition that costumes are confirmed for. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some kind of charity pro+celebrity baseball/softball game where everyone dressed up, but are there any known instances of a pro (major or minor league) team costuming even for an exhibition?
I once attended a Raptors game dressed as Winnie the Pooh.
Pooh Bear would have played better than the Raptors did that evening. I’m sure it was quite a sight seeing a six-foot-two Pooh Bear screaming obscenities at Mark Jackson.
Incidentally, teams in the American Hockey League tend to wear special jerseys all the time (I remember the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Baby Penguins wearing Valentine’s Day jerseys…way to inspire fear in your opponents guys!) so I’m sure one of those teams has done something special for Halloween.
Now that I think of it, I believe Game 7 of last year’s world series was scheduled for October 31st in Fenway Park.
It didn’t come to that of course, but I still had an amazing vision of the entire crowd in costume : 100 various ghosts or other curse-related costumes, 50 people in random strange costumes, and 14,850 people – cheering men, women, children, babies – in Johnny Damon fake beards and wigs.
If I was good enough with Photoshop I’d make it happen, but it’s still a beautiful image in my head.
</end hijack into MPSIMS>
