From the Bullpen: Sports fashion police

I love jerseys. Besides actually watching, this is probably one of my favorite aspects of sports.

I love wearing my team’s jersey and showing pride. It is safe to say I have a bit of an obsession. If I had enough money I would love to buy jerseys of everyone on the Chicago Cubs and Blackhawks rosters.

Jerseys can strike up a conversation between strangers. For example, whenever I wear a Cubs jersey around campus I hear people say, “The Cubs suck.”

Now I am nowhere near the fashion police. In fact, while I am sitting at my computer writing this column I am wearing basketball shorts and a T-shirt. However, there are some terrible sports uniforms. They are awful. I feel bad for their fans because I would not be caught dead in some of these shirts.

Luckily for me, the Chicago teams are very stylish, well, for the most part. Which brings me to number one on my list of sports fashion victims, the 1976 Chicago White Sox.

As a side note I planned on using each sport in this list. But, there were so many horrible uniforms and jerseys I figured it would be easier to choose if I just picked one sport. So here is my baseball fashion police blotter.

 

Photo courtesy of www.nydailynews.com

Now being a Chicago Cubs fan, I may be a little biased, I have hated the Sox since birth. However, when you take a second look at these uniforms, no matter what team wore them, it would still be awful. I mean come on, shorts! Even young boys in pony league get to wear pants. Was the extra 12 inches of fabric too expensive? You can’t forget the collar and knee-high socks. It’s quite a look. The players look like they should be going to class at a private school. In fact, my school uniform in grade school looks suspiciously close to what the Sox are wearing.

 

Photo courtesy of bleacherreport.com

Cartoons on jerseys are bad and the Pirates are huge offenders in this category. Look at that huge pirate. It almost takes up the entire torso of the player. Frankly, the pirate is just creepy. I guess that’s one way for a team to win. Put a creepy pirate on the first baseman’s chest and the player won’t want to come anywhere near you. Also what are the Pirates’ colors? Oh yeah, yellow and black, so where did the red come from?

 

Photo courtesy of sports.espn.go.com

Now these uniforms actually aren’t that bad, but if you look close at the word “Nationals” on the player’s chest you will notice something is off. The word is missing the letter O. Now these were not intentional and only two players wore the jersey. After three innings someone realized the blunder and made the players change. I guess one could argue that the button in the middle of the word is supposed to be the missing O. Even though from far away you can’t see the button and it still looks misspelled. Either way it is not good. This is what spell check is for.

So, to summarize: Major League Baseball players wear pants not shorts, big ugly cartoons ruin jerseys, use colors sparingly and always spell check.

The MLB should hire me as their consultant.

Column by Jaci Kohn, Assistant Sports Editor

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