MLB's Role in Reducing the Stigma of Mental Illness?

As ravid baseball fans are no doubt aware of (or maybe not) Khalil Greene, of the St. Louis Cardinals, is on the DL with not a physical injury, but for social anxiety disorder. In a similar situation, Dontrelle Willis also spent time on the DL this year for another mental illness (can't remember what). These are the first two instances in which I've ever heard of players going on the DL or missing games due to mental illness, although I'm sure it has happened before (a little help?). As one who is very familiar with mental illness I can attest to a social stigma, especially attached to men, that exists against mental illness, as well as its debilitating effect on one's ability to even take care of themselves, let alone successfully perform at their occupation at a consistently high level. I find Greene and Willis' stints on the DL with the cause fully disclosed kind of refreshing, especially given the tough-guy, invincible, controlled masculinity that's so espoused in professional sports in the United States. Will acknowledging that one's performance on the field, or whatever the competitive enviornment, has lessened due to mental illness totally reduce the stigma against mental illness? Probably not. Will it help? Probably. But one thing is for sure: it's nice to see athletes admitting their condition and not having the press (as far as I know) trashing them.

Wearing white pants on the road: Why do some baseball teams do it?

College and high school teams will routinely wear white pants on the road. Watch the CWS this year and you’re bound to see at least one occurrence of both teams wearing white pants. I’m not sure why exactly, but I think rules only require they wear a different color top than the home team and it is at the home team’s discretion what color to wear. My guess is it is a cost saving measure. Get two different tops, one white, one solid color, and then only one pair of pants and you just saved outfitting your entire team with two completely different uniforms.

While generally a high school/college occurrence it isn’t unprecedented in major league baseball. The best example off the top of my head is the Astros. Throughout the last half of the 70s the Astros had only one uniform that they wore at home and one the road: the classic tequila sunrise uniform:

No other team had a combination like this so they were guaranteed to always be different no matter at home or on the road. Things got weirder in the 80s as the Astros added a different away uniform, but instead of being gray, it was cream. So at home they wore white and on the road cream.



For a better visual comparison than the pictures think the Dodgers crisp home whites versus the color the Giants wear at home, that more retro, cream color. As a kid I always thought this to be weird and I’ve never heard a good explanation (I mean the Astros played in the Astrodome for pete’s sake so it’s not like they were trying to avoid wearing dark colors during the heat of the summer). They had this lack of a true “away gray” jersey up until 1994 when they switched to their current logo (albeit without the color red which was added in 2000).

On a side note, I actually had a replica tequila sunrise Astros jersey as a kid. I’m not exactly sure why, but my dad, as noted earlier, had eclectic uniform tastes so he probably bought it for me because it was so strange looking. I outgrew the jersey by the time I left for junior high and it is probably long since given away to Goodwill, but it’s hard not to remember it. In fact, I was pretty well decked out as a kid in the baseball jersey department. I also remember having a replica home Cubs jersey and a green A’s jersey. Probably a good reason I’m uniform obsessed today.

So there is your baseball uniform history lesson for the day.

(Drawings courtesy of the Baseball Hall of Fame's Dressed to the Nines)

Baseball Uniform Heaven

Sunday afternoon I was trying to finish up some laundry while the little one napped. I came across a college baseball game on Comcast Sports. Granted it wasn't my preferred local team of choice, but I hadn't watched live, competitive baseball in 4 months and I love college baseball, so I was hooked.
I've made my distaste for Oregon's new baseball uniforms clear, so I was shocked at the beauty I was presented with during Sunday's game. Oregon was wearing some alternate uniform combination-- college teams have so many (that's 7 different jerseys for South Carolina in the background of this photo) that it's hard to say it is "Alternate 1" or "Home-Sunday Alternate" or something like that--but it was beautiful.
Let me back up for a second. I haven't put this down in writing, but when it comes to baseball I'm what I would describe as an eclectic traditionalist. What I mean is my favorite styles of baseball uniforms are more traditional looks (by styles I'm referring to stripes, cut, font, and design - I'm not a clothes designer so I don't know the field-specific terms so you'll have to follow along as best you can), but with more eclectic combinations. I'm not afraid of baseball teams wearing colors other than white and gray (as many teams in Major League Baseball were afraid to do until recently); heck I'm even for teams wearing colored pants.
That was probably too short an explanation, but it provides some background for my reasoning behind the two things I fell in love with from Oregon on Sunday.
First was the alternate hat they wore (shown below).

It's a thing of beauty. Every time I design the University of Wyoming's baseball uniforms in my head (and when I say 'every time' I'm not talking about once or twice - I think about this once a month or so) their main cap has this same back-ground color pattern, except brown instead of green and white instead of yellow (if you followed that, give yourself a high five). When UW cut their college baseball program in the early 90's my allegiances switched to Wichita St for a lot of superficial reasons (a. their colors are similar to Wyoming's, b. they have a "W" on their cap, c. they were successful in the College World Series when that was the only college baseball ever shown on television, and d. they were relatively close to Wyoming compared with the other college baseball powers that mostly resided in warm-weather states). So I've always wanted to use the same cap style from the Shockers for Wyoming's imaginary return to the sport. I like this color pattern better than when teams add a different color bill. I'm not sure why more teams don't go this route.
Secondly, was their choice for stockings. In the contemporary baseball world where some players pull their pants down over their socks and the rest all wear solid color socks (like a girls soccer team would wear over their shinguards) it was gloriously refreshing to see actual stirrups being sported by a couple members of the Oregon baseball team (unfortunately I couldn't find any photos online to show you so you'll have to use your imagination). But it wasn't just stirrups - they not only wore green stirrups, but they had on lightning yellow socks underneath to produce an effect similar to this.

I'm pretty sure my obsession with stirrups, and more-to-the-point, multiple stirrups with different color socks underneath, comes from my dad. When I was growing up he was the head coach/GM/uniform supplier/utility-man for my church's softball team. The fact that my dad at the time played for a church softball team might be kind of funny in retrospect, but that's beside the point. When you think of rec-league or church softball it's generally a bunch of guys that look like this. They show up with the same lazily put together t-shirt, but everything else is different. Some wear sweats, some shorts, some even show up in jeans. No one wears the same hat if they wear a hat at all. Don't even begin to think about wearing stirrups. So it was quite extraordinary that my dad, for at least 3 or 4 years, had our church softball team outfitted in baseball-looking uniforms. They had real baseball pants, stirrups, and jerseys complete with logo and number. I wish I had some pictures, but I'll have to do this from memory. My dad fashioned the jersey's based on the 70's Oakland A's and the Baltimore Orioles. Our church's colors were orange and brown (big reason why those are two of my favorite colors still). We had a white jersey that said "Alliance" in brown script and an orange jersey with a stylized "A" logo on the left side (similar to what the Detroit Tigers or Cubs have on their home jerseys); we had white pants and brown pants; we had orange stirrups, brown stirrups, and solid orange socks; and we had two different caps - an all brown model and a white model with an orange front and bill. All these options meant our softball team had 24 different uniform combinations. My dad would sit down prior to the start of the year and plan out what uniforms we would wear for each game taking into consideration not wearing the same combination against the same team twice. It was all really amazing and probably what started my obsession with uniforms. Anyway, I digress. The point of all that was one of the stirrups/socks combinations was brown stirrups over orange socks, which sounds hideous, but I was personally fascinated by. No one in major league baseball wears a combination like this anymore and it is rare to see a team of any level do this.
The uniform combinations Oregon wore were, strangely for a completely new team, nostalgic for me. It made me think of watching Wichita St on my black and white 13 in. tv in my bedroom as they won the CWS. It made me think of watching my dad dressed up in a professional looking baseball uniform, not much older then than I am now, and how much fun it was to watch him play. He was wildly more talented than I am. I remember watching very little of his actual games because as soon as I got to the softball fields I would immediately (in my own rudimentary uniform replicas) take off to play waffle ball with my friends and imagine I was my Dad belting homers, hustling like Pete Rose, and in hindsight, being a little too competitive for church softball.

Manny being Manny, or Scott Boras being Scott Boras

Picking up on a theme I threw down a couple posts ago, I just love Manny. Scott Boras just turned down the Dodgers' last offer of $45 mill over two years with a player only option for the second year. Turned down $45 mill? What world are you living in Boras. Of course Boras has kids to feed, and his 5% or 10% of whatever he gets out of each contract needs to be large enough to feed all those munchkins.

Here's to you Manny and Boras, straight from my Microsoft paint files.....I call it the Manny Salute

yes, griffey

This really is Fish. Just like David, I really couldn't say I'm a "real" Mariners fan, only a "kind of" fan because living in North Idaho I didn't really have any options. Yeah, the Twins may be my team, but almost no chance to see them, even on TV, during my time in Idaho and Oregon.

Hearing that Griffey has signed with Seattle has not really made my day at all, because it's really not that earth shattering, but it is good news nonetheless. Because now I will get to see him with the Mariners when they roll into KC. God damn is that going to be a terrible series or what? Two shitty teams going head to head in like 100 degrees with high humidity. But I'll be there, chearing for an old and just about used up Ken Griffey Jr., the greatest player of his generation.

Griffey

Admittedly I am not a Mariners fan. I don't really follow them with the same passion or connection (however real or fake) that a real fan does (or would). But ever since word leaked last week that the Mariners were in the hunt to sign Ken Griffey Jr as a free agent, I found myself unexplainably excited. I basically missed Griffey's first stint with Seattle as he left after the 1999 season and I had just moved to the Northwest in 1998; I hadn't yet put down roots or become involved in any of the local teams. So this presented itself as an opportunity to relive that time, what I would guess is the glory days of Mariner baseball.

I'm not naive enough to believe this was anything but a marketing ploy by the team. Griffey isn't the commanding presence in the lineup anymore. He's not going to lead the team to the playoffs by his offensive production. He's being paid basically to draw folks back to the ballpark and wash themselves in the pool of nostalgia. And I don't blame the Mariners for this. I hate, hate, HATE bringing up THE ECONOMY (dun, dun, dunnnnn), but you gotta do what you gotta do to try and remain viable with the current state of things today. If that means bringing back a past-his-prime ballplayer to wring a few more dollars out of ticket sales, then by all means. I know it's worked for me. I haven't bought tickets yet, but before the Griffey signing I wasn't planning on making a trip to Safeco this year. Now, I am instinctually drawn, like wanting to catch a Merle Haggard concert before he fades away into old age or a museum exhibit before it is shuttered to the public.

So as a non-Mariners fan who happens to live in Mariner country, this is happy news. There are grumblings out there, probably among the real fans, that this does nothing for the team and may even set them back. But I don't care. I'm just here to catch a farewell performance.

by David (I know it says it's by Fish, but I accidentally signed in under his name, sorry)