Baseball uniform
[1] Today, sales of replica uniforms and derivative branded products generate large amounts of income for Major League teams through merchandising.
The New York Knickerbockers were the first baseball team to wear uniforms, taking the field on April 4, 1849, in pants made of blue wool, white flannel shirts and straw hats.
The Kansas City Athletics' home and road uniforms were changed by Charles O. Finley in 1963, to the colors of gold and green.
[3] The Chicago Cubs were wearing pinstripes in 1907 The Brooklyn Bridegrooms used checked uniforms in 1889, and brought them back in 1907 (as the Superbas) and 1916–1917 (as the Robins).
[7][8] Satin uniforms were developed by several teams including the Brooklyn Dodgers for night games, as the sheen of the fabric was more reflective and thus easier to see.
[3][7] In 1960, the Chicago White Sox were the first team to place players' names on the back of their jerseys, doing so on their road jerseys; within a few years, this practice became almost universal in MLB, though to this day the Yankees have only worn names on their uniforms for Players Weekend, a discontinued event (2017-2019) where alternate uniforms with nicknames were used.
Controversy over major league baseball teams' newly redesigned uniforms erupted during spring training in 2024.
Many players were upset with the way the jerseys looked, saying that the smaller numbers and letters made them feel as if they were wearing replicas.
In the 1960s, the Kansas City Athletics began wearing revolutionary white shoes, a tradition carried over when they moved to Oakland.
Except for a few "candy-cane" varieties (particularly by the New York Giants, St. Louis Cardinals and Washington Senators), striping was quite minimal during the 1920s and, in contrast, a revival of other sorts in the early 1930s.
This led to a violation of the literal concept of a "uniform", in that different players on a given team might wear knee-length and full-length pants on the field at the same time.
Players such as Manny Ramirez took this fashion trend to an extreme, wearing loose-fitting pants whose legs nearly lapped under the heels of the shoes.
By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, nearly all players wore either traditional knee-high socks or pants that covered the shoetops and contained no elastic in the bottom.
In recent years teams that wear throwback uniforms usually outfit themselves with stirrups or knee-breeches, to simulate the look of a particular era.
In recent years, with team nicknames being so strongly associated with the clubs, logos that were once only used at home also turned up on road jerseys, in place of city names.
