I was at the park today - and needed to use the restroom and the only one free was in the middle of the softball fields. There were teams of girls playing, and many of them looked pretty good (though one team had not yet learned that calling the ball does not mean that two of you call it and two more crowd in on it for a near mad collision of four members of the infield at one spot - but I’m digressing). But they were dressed funny.
Years and years and years ago, when I played softball, we wore baseball uniforms. Baseball pants, long socks, stirrups, etc. But if I’d seen these kids off the field, without a mitt on, I would have thought it was an exceptionally large basketball team. The v-necked, nylon-y t-shirts and long shorts, short socks, and knee pads (the knee pads were especially odd. Knee pads? for softball?) Why such a radical change? When did this happen?
Still, very cool to see girls playing softball on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Those knee pads? Those are sliding pads. They’re supposed to go on the leg you slide on (duh) but some of the kids have them from previous years, so they wear two. I don’t understand the rationale of putting softball players in shorts, but it’s pretty standard, at least around here. The high school teams seem to use the long pants, baseball type uniforms, but the rec leagues wear shorts. Might have something to do with the different times of the year they play. My daughters’ standard uniform for rec league was visor, shirt (usually v-neck, sometimes sleeveless), shorts with sliding shorts underneath, sliding pad, long socks. So basically one leg was covered all summer and the other was exposed from a couple inches above the knee to about an inch or so below the knee. We call that the softball tan.
Couple that with the “caddy tan” my older daughter got from wearing short socks and shorts on the golf course, and she was all set to wear a bathing suit.