Archive for May, 2006
It’s always big uni news when the Red Sox call up pitcher Abe Alvarez, a unique player who’s been riding the Boston/Pawtucket shuttle for several seasons now. Alvarez, who was called up on Friday and made his 2006 MLB debut yesterday, is still wearing glasses and still has his cap tilted to one side (he does this because he’s legally blind in his left eye; for more on the tilted-cap phenomenon, look here), although his degree of cap rotation appears to be a bit less than in the past. But the new wrinkle is that he’s now wearing stirrups, something he’d previously done in the minors while playing for Portland and Pawtucket, but not during his previous stints in the majors.
Another Uni Watch favorite made his 2006 debut over the weekend: Anthony Reyes of the Cardinals, who pitched on Saturday and, as usual, had his pants hiked up to reveal his sock stripes. Not sure if he was wearing real stirrups or not, though. Last year, he wore those bogus one-piece socks with a faux stirrup pattern woven in (which is also what Rick Ankiel and Jason Simontacchi have worn in recent years), but in spring training this year Reyes appeared to have genuine stirrups over white sanitaries. I couldn’t get a clear enough view on MLB.TV’s low-res game video, but I think he had real stirrups on Saturday. Anyone else happen to notice?
More news from yesterday:
• The White Sox were supposed to be wearing a 1906 throwback outfit — complete with a henley pullover and a blank cap — for Sunday home games this season. But they didn’t wear the old-school design on Sundays, or on any other day, until yesterday, for their game against the Cubs. Too bad they’re not using blank batting helmets to match the caps (which made for odd scenes like this), and that almost everyone wore their pants down long, which definitely detracts from the look. Still, gotta love the uni numbers.
• The Nationals wore their alternate “DC” caps yesterday, but someone forgot to tell Alex Escobar, who wore the team’s script “W” cap.
• It’s always weird to see a longtime big-leaguer wearing a minor league uniform during a rehab stint, especially when it’s David Wells. Like, shouldn’t they just let him wear sweatpants and a ratty T-shirt or something?
May 22nd, 2006
The Pirates and Indians did the throwback thing last night, dressing up as the Homestead Grays and Cleveland Buckeyes, respectively. Too bad they wore their regular batting helmets, but they still get points for the cool rear-jersey numbers, the contrast-colored flap pockets, and the absence of the MLB logo on the rear collar.
But my favorite period detail was on the pants, where they put a belt loop right at 12 o’clock. This used to be pretty common way back in the day. Since the belt loop was centered, many players wore their belt buckles off to the side — sometimes way off to the side. But at some point the center loop disappeared and belt buckles moved to 12 o’clock. Good to see the people at Majestic being true to this detail when making the throwback unis (even if most of the jerseys were too baggy for the waistline to even show).
Speeaking of belt loops, when Barry Bonds hit his Babe-tying homer last night, he missed a loop. Pretty sloppy, but it could’ve been worse: At least his fly wasn’t unzipped, like Ray King last June.
May 21st, 2006
Saw something in last night’s Mets/Yanks game I’d never seen before: Home plate ump Alfonso Marquez, who wears No. 72, had his uniform number on his chest protector. This is the first time I can remember seeing an MLB umpire wearing his uni number anyplace other than on his jacket sleeve or shirt sleeve.
All of which raises the question of why umpires and referees need uni numbers in the first place. Like, seriously, can you identify a single ump or ref, past or present, by number? Consider MLB’s senior umpire, Bruce Froemming, who’s been on the job since 1971 — quick, what’s his uni number? Granted, Froemming’s number (which happens to be 6) is sometimes overshadowed by his Adonis-like physique and legendary tact, but I trust you get my point.
(Speaking of Froemming: I was once at a game where he split his pants while bending over to dust off the plate — truly en epochal Uni Watch moment. For the next several innings he kicked the plate clean with his feet. When even that proved too strenuous, he had the grounds crew bring over some baseline chalk and, I swear, had them scatter it on top of the plate, so it would look white without his having to do anything. Some clown in the stands — who happened to look and sound a lot like me — spent the rest of the game screaming, “Froemming, you fat fuck, clean bend over and clean it yourself!”)
MLB umpire numbers are a fairly recent innovation. They were first worn by National League umps in 1970, and the American League followed a year later. (For more on the history of umpire attire, look here.) More than three decades later, I’m fairly certain not a single fan can name a single umpire by number. After John McSherry died of a heart attack at Shea Stadium in 1996, the Mets wore a memorial sleeve patch that included his uni number — an empty gesture, since nobody ever knew his number in the first place. Similarly, NHL officials have been wearing a “72″ sleeve patch sleeve patch this season in memory of linesman Stephane Provost, who died last year, but I bet even most NHL officials never knew what Provost’s number was.
The smartest approach is taken by the NCAA, which has its football officials wear letters instead of numbers — “S” for the side judge, “B” for the back judge, and so on. That’s way better than the situation in the NFL, where officials wear their numbers fore and aft — a double dose of numerical pointlessness.
May 20th, 2006
How big a phenomenon is logo creep? So big that it’s spawned its own semi-dirty joke (contributed by reader Brian Hauck):
A stud athlete is getting down and dirty with a female fan. Off comes his shirt, and there’s a swoosh tattooed on his arm. “Oh my gosh! What’s that?” asks the wide-eyed vixen.
“My swoosh? It’s an endorsement. Nike paid me $5000 to get that tattoo.”
Things get a little hotter, and off come the athlete’s pants, revealing a Reebok logo on his calf. “Wow! You endorse Reebok, too?”
“Yep, they paid me $10,000 for this tat.”
Finally, things are really getting hot and heavy between the two, and the fan pulls off the player’s underwear. She looks at his, uh, Lousiville Slugger and sees “AIDS” tattooed in black letters. With a look of horror, she exclaims, “Oh no! You have AIDS?”
“Naw, babe! Give it a sec, and it’ll spell ADIDAS!”
Thank you, thank you. I’m here all week. Try the brisket, it’s terrific.
In a related item, I reported last month on ESPN.com that Nike had brought logo creep to new depths by paying for swoosh placement in Marvel comic books. Now James Huening reports that last month’s issue of the X-Men featured the Nike 6.0 logo as bathroom graffiti. It’s not clear if this is part of the exposure Nike’s paying for or, as Huening suggests, if the toilet placement was surreptitiously done by the Marvel editorial team as a way of “letting us know what they think about this marketing strategy.”
That makes two straight days that the X-Men have been referenced in this blog. I want to make it really, really clear that they will not be mentioned tomorrow.
Meanwhile, in actual sports-related news:
• I’ve previously mentioned that Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy intended to change the team’s jerseys as soon as he got some paperwork issues straightened out, and now the new design has been leaked. The good news is that the new uni numbers are a big improvement; the bad news is that the jersey feature’s Nike’s loathsome wraparound bib template, which is spreading, avian flu-like, throughout college football. Toss in the orange color and, gee, does this new design remind you of anything?
• In last week’s ESPN column, I mentioned that the green piping on the Buffalo Bisons’ jersey was missing from C.C. Sabathia’s uni when he made a recent minor league rehab start. Okay, so mistakes happen in the minors. But the same thing happened last Sunday in Atlanta, where the white piping on the Braves’ red jerseys was missing from Chad Paronto’s jersey. Between this and the move away from vertically arched player-name lettering, the Braves’ quality control has gone straight to hell.
• And with the NHL conference finals about to begin, the secret behind the Hurricanes’ playoff run is obvious: Goalie Cam Ward has “Have Fun” written on his stick (look closely — it’s inside the last “O”).
May 19th, 2006
I don’t much care for blogs; I don’t even like word blog. But until we come up with a better term, this here thing you’re now reading is a blog devoted to the details of sports uniform design. If you’re already familiar with my “Uni Watch” column, which runs on ESPN.com, welcome aboard and many thanks for your past support; if you’re new to Uni Watch and want to get a sense of what it’s all about, an archive of my ESPN material is here, and you may also want to check out this site’s About Uni Watch and FAQ pages.
Just so there’s no misunderstanding: “Uni Watch” will continue to run on ESPN.com. This site is intended to supplement the column, not replace it. So why create a new forum when the column is doing just fine on its own? Here are some of the reasons:
• The ESPN column only runs every two weeks, which inevitably means some of the material in it is already old news by the time it’s published. My hope is that the blog will allow me to react to things more or less in real time.
• Another result of the two-week ESPN cycle is that each column installment tends to be very long — sometimes very, very long. Siphoning off some of the material into the blog should make the column more manageable, which will be better for everyone.
• Sometimes there are uni-related topics I want to explore that don’t fit the tone of the column, or aren’t quite ready for prime time. I’m hoping the blog will serve as a staging area for these topics. I’ll get to one of them in a minute, in fact.
• Lots of readers have told me they’d read fresh Uni Watch material every day if it was available. Well, now it is.
The blog will probably take a bit of time to find its voice, rhythm, and character. The only thing I’m sure of for now is that I want it to sound at least somewhat distinct from the column. If you’re a regular reader, you’ve probably already noticed that this entry includes words like I, me, and my, which I never use on ESPN. I enjoy the column’s third-person Uni Watch persona and self-conscious geekiness, but I want the blog’s style to be more straightforward, less affected. So instead of saying, “Uni Watch is gravely distressed by the latest machinations emanating from the offices of Swooshkateers, Inc.,” as I might do in the column, here I’ll be more inclined to say, “Nike totally sucks.”
All of which brings us to one of those exploratory topics I mentioned earlier. In a word: superheroes.
To explain: It seems to me that the big trend in sports design these days — furthered, of course, by Nike — is toward superhero costumes. Those injection-molded batting helmets and dot-sleeved undershirts are good examples of this. So are Nike’s asymmetrical football sleeves, those gonzo Oregon football designs, the NFL’s increasing use of dark-on-dark outfits, and the rise of tights in the NBA. All these looks show a heavy comic book influence.
And I’m not the only one who thinks so. When Serena Williams wore one of her outlandish getups at Key Biscayne in 2004, an AP story said she “looked like a costumed superhero.” A few days later she switched to a different design and then said, “This is my Wonder Woman outfit. I feel real powerful in this suit, like a superhero.” And according to this recent article, a new kind of wrestling uniform “resembles a superhero’s ensemble.”
Video games probably have a lot to do with this, since they literally turn sports into a cartoon. Another contributing factor: merchandising, where even the sales imagery looks comic book-esque. That’s not surprising, since modern training methods and steroids have given us athletes with superhuman or even freakish physiques.
Personally, I have nothing against comic books, video games, or big muscles. But I think the sad thing about this aesthetic is that it’s probably put a big dent in the aspirational aspect of being a young fan, because it puts sports on an unattainable fantasy plane. Like, I used to think (however misguidedly) that I could grow up to be a ballplayer. But most kids are smart enough to know they’ll never grow up to Superman.
Okay, that’s enough for the first day. Check back tomorrow for more. Meanwhile, as always, feel free to be in touch.
May 17th, 2006
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