The Chicago White Sox unveiled the gayest MLB uniform ever 50 years ago
Baseball players have incredible legs. Only the 1976 Chicago White Sox shorts uniforms showed them off in the way they deserve.
Mark
Welcome back to Talkin’ Gaysball where we’ve always believed Chris Sale took scissors to the wrong part of the uniform.
Baseball pants are a miracle of aesthetic design.
For evidence of this, I need only submit three words:
As Your Friendly Neighborhood Baseball Gay, though, I’ve always had the sense that there was more there to be unlocked.
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When a player like Spencer Strider possesses the kind of thighs that are normally chiseled by Michelangelo, it feels like there’s a better way for his uniform to highlight such a feature.
Fifty years ago last Saturday, the Chicago White Sox showed us that there is such a way by unveiling the gayest uniform design in MLB history.
On Aug. 8, 1976, the ChiSox played a game in baseball shorts.
As longtime veteran Ralph Garr’s lewk demonstrated in the photo above, when your team is literally named after hosiery, leg day should be compulsory.
The uniform shorts were dreamed up by Hall of Fame owner Bill Veeck, presumably to beta test the slogan: “The 1976 White Sox: Not even our pants can contain us.”
Veeck was known for doing anything and everything for publicity, from inventing the exploding scoreboard to sending a 3-feet-7-inch little person to bat wearing the number 1/8.
When he re-purchased the Sox in 1975, Chicago was ready for Veeck to hit the ground running with attention-grabbing gimmicks and he didn’t disappoint. That winter, Veeck brought in several South Side legends to unveil the team’s new unis.
I’ll let the Chicago Tribune take it from here:
“Then, out pranced [1950’s Sox star Jim] Rivera, preening not unlike a peacock in white soccer-style stockings that stopped below the knee, and blue leisure-shorts that stopped just above the knee.”
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Some White Sox were apprehensive. Second baseman Jack Brohamer, apparently unaware that he possessed the perfect surname to launch a leather bar franchise, told the media, “I’m not going to wear short pants unless they let me wear a halter top too!”
Look, when you’re playing in direct sunlight at 3 p.m. on a 95-degree August day, the most important quality you want in a jersey is breathability. This was the most practical idea any baseball player had in the entire decade.
Fireballer and cantankerous curmudgeon Goose Gossage remarked, “Hope they give us a little notice so I can buy some Nair.”
Based on his own standard about anyone who uses performance enhancing substances, we now have evidence that Gossage would kick himself out of the Hall of Fame.
Despite the early publicity, the Sox kept their shorts under wraps for the first four months of the season. But then they finally decided to break them out on the field in August and the entire game took notice.
Because this was the 1970s, the opposing Kansas City Royals heckled the ChiSox in exactly the way you’d expect.
“You guys are the sweetest team we’ve seen yet!” catcalled K.C.’s John Mayberry. Then looking at Garr’s muscular quads, Mayberry bellowed, “If you get over to first base, I’m gonna give you a kiss!”
Alas, when they built old Comiskey Park in 1910, the architect neglected to add a cottage.
By taking the field in shorts, the White Sox found out what gays and women had been trying to tell them for decades: Straight men are the worst. But they got a measure of revenge by defeating the Royals 5-2.
A few weeks later, the Sox pledged to wear their shorts again and drew 32,607—their third biggest crowd of the season. They beat the Orioles 11-10 to go 2-0 in short pants.
Were exposed calves baseball’s new market inefficiency?
Sadly, no. The Pale Hose tried the shorts one more time, lost the game, and attendance again slumped.
Nonetheless, even though they only wore them for three games, the 1970s White Sox and shorts are indelibly linked in the public consciousness. So much so that one pair of the team’s uniform shorts is on permanent display in Cooperstown.
(@baseballhall)As for the modern day White Sox? You can see their tribute to the shorts lewk every June when mascot Southpaw leads the team’s contingent in the Chicago Pride Parade.
Once again, Veeck was decades ahead of his time.
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