Stirrups look so much better than pajamas

Jack McDonald probably said it best of all. I was doing my usual griping and complaining about how today's baseball players have no respect for either tradition or themselves by degrading and eschewing the most traditional portion of the uniform -- between the knees and shins.

McDonald nodded and agreed with my utter disdain and hatred of today's style. "They look like pajamas," he said of today's pants that drag across the heels of the shoes. He's right. I knew it looked ridiculous but had never thought of pajamas until McDonald said it.

I played both baseball and eventually softball in a time when stirrup socks and what are commonly known as sanitary hose were an integral part of the uniform. To me, the pride of wearing a baseball uniform was the stirrups, something you didn't wear any time except when you walked between those white lines. The stirrups came over the thin white sanitaries that stretched to just under the knee.

The first sign of change came along about 1971 when the stirrups began to rise and the days of the high riser, led most notably by Henry Aaron and Amos Otis, arrived and thrived for a decade or more. In the early 1980s "Silent" George Hendrick began what has evolved into today's style of the disappearing stirrup. I remember a 1981 trip to Minnesota. Twins owner Calvin Griffith had made a team rule that players had to have the TC logo above the stirrup on their calves visible. This angered them. It didn't bother Griffith one iota if it bothered them or not. He signed their paychecks and didn't want his players to look silly just because their pals also wanted to look silly, thus making it cool.

What bothered me most about this whole matter and has from the start is the undeniable fact that players with higher cut socks have a smaller strike zone. Look at the umpire's plane of vision. If the umpire has a clean line to observe, the batter will often get the calls below the break in color line. It is physics and vision. Nothing more, nothing less. But players apparently feel it is more important to follow fashion than to get a few calls.

I did some research in an attempt to determine just when the baseball stirrup was born and it was prior to World War I sometime. These weren't the familiar style. You know, the stirrup worn by guys like Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Lou Gehrig, Yogi Berra, Jimie Foxx, Roy Campanella, Sandy Koufax, oh, well, I think you can fill in the blanks from here. None of those all-time greats of the game pulled his pants down over his shoes and thought it was neato. He wore his uniform with dignity and pride, of which the stirrup socks were an integral part.

While many of the players utilize today's style of pajama pants, there is another group of which my nephew, Chase, when a Nevada Tiger was a part of. It's the group with the high colored socks, which look considerably better than the alternative but still not as good as the rarely seen stirrup. Early this season I noticed a Griffon or two wearing stirrups and a goodly number of Hays Larks attired in them.

Yet, I guess I can to some extent see why so many of today's players like to go out and emulate today's players. They want wear their pants just like Barry Bonds, the original steroid kid, but fail to go to the plate in all the body armor he wears up there. Steroids make you stronger but have a tendency to turn the body's tolerance level into glass.

Now don't turn around and go 'Aha!' thinking it's a hit piece on Bonds because I don't like him. Well, I like Mark Teahen and you can't see his socks either.

When Joe Warren and I attended a game in Springfield between the Cardinals and Wichita Wranglers it took me about six seconds to notice all the Springfield players were wearing facsimile (although you can't tell the difference) stirrups with horizontal stripes of white, blue, white, red, white, blue and white enveloped by red. It was then I learned that the St. Louis organization, which I now hold in much higher esteem than previously, requires that its players wear those correct socks until they reach the majors, at which time they can start looking silly if they so desire.

Some people just don't have any sense of tradition and heritage, the most important things in my life. I've always said it's pretty hard to tell where you're going if you don't know where you've been or how you got here.