October 15, 2008

"There's No (Long Pants) In Baseball!"

I was a huge baseball fan growing up. But, a combination of missteps and blunders culminating in divisional realignment and the strike caused me to turn my back on Major League Baseball in 1994.

I will occasionally catch a glimpse of a game on TV or something, but I would be hard pressed to tell you who current players are, or what teams are ahead in the (now meaningless) pennant race. Flipping through the channels today, though, I saw something that completely freaked me out.

Apparently, baseball players wear long pants now. Not just long, but hanging down past the ankles dragging in the dirt kind of long. When did this happen?

I'm going to set aside all of my rants about disrespecting tradition, because they've been falling on deaf ears all these years anyway. Instead, I'll just step right to this: Does no one realize how stupid this looks?

Oh, and in related news, apparently they have baseball teams in Florida now. Who knew?

1 comment:

Captain Emus said...

The baggy pants hearken back to the early days of baseball when pants were baggy, albeit knee-length. Any classic photo of Ty Cobb or Christy Matthewson will be a good example of this.

The modern version, which lacks the stirrups that are the essence of the classic uniform and which make ballplayers appear as if they are wearing pajamas, are troubling. For us die hard baseball fans, we can only hope that players such as Juan Pierre, Barry Zito, and Jamie Moyer will keep the classic uniform alive long enough for it to come back into fashion.

In the meantime, we can blame Manny Ramirez and Albert Belle for the current fiasco. Just like we can blame them for pretty much everything else that is wrong with baseball.