1882 National League Unis

[MisterE]

While doing some baseball uniform sluthing, I found a horrible idea from the 1882 National League. That season, the league decided to color code all positions instead of numbers. The team would add any wordmarks or logos, but team colors were to disapear. The pants and belts would be white.

Here's what the field would have looked like:

Pitcher:light blue

Catcher:scarlet

First basemen:scarlet and white

Second basemen:orange and black

Third basemen:gray and white

Shortstop:maroon

Left fielder:white

Center fielder:red and black

Right fielder:gray

Substitutes: green or brown

A week into the season, the players refused to wear them and were never worn again. I wanna know how they were going to distinguish teams.

[illinirox1]

This actually rings a bell, I believe I read it in some baseball history book. Those teams would look kind of like the Landskrona Bulldosers...

Clicky

[Bleujayone]

That's funny, I remember a story about the World Football League involving an idea for teams to wear color coded pants based on positions. Before the 1975 campaign kicked off, owners considered instituting the wacky rule that would require offensive lineman, receivers and backs to all wear different color pants, with defensive lineman, linebackers and backs also required to don contrasting colors. Quarterbacks would get white pants with stars running down the legs. I guess they thought if people were so stupid to watch them, they needed help showing who was who.

http://wflfootball.tripod.com/images/pants.jpg

The players revolted in the locker rooms on game day and refused to wear them. Larry Csonka was quoted as saying he "did not sign on to play on a team that looked like a fruit salad!" They ended up wearing their original pants from the previous season and the idea was scrapped.

http://wflfootball.tripod.com/images/csonka.jpg

[markar14]

I'm surprised no team has tried this as a novelty hypothetical-throwback day, or tried it on their modern day unis for a game... there'd be too much going on for a televised game, which wouldn't have been an issue to a leage in 1882. I'd still imagine it difficult to watch a live game if there were anywhere from 10-13 different colored unis simultaneously on the field.

[jrh31584]

While doing some baseball uniform sluthing, I found a horrible idea from the 1882 National League. That season, the league decided to color code all positions instead of numbers. The team would add any wordmarks or logos, but team colors were to disapear. The pants and belts would be white.

Here's what the field would have looked like:

Pitcher:light blue

Catcher:scarlet

First basemen:scarlet and white

Second basemen:orange and black

Third basemen:gray and white

Shortstop:maroon

Left fielder:white

Center fielder:red and black

Right fielder:gray

Substitutes: green or brown

A week into the season, the players refused to wear them and were never worn again. I wanna know how they were going to distinguish teams.

I think they intended to use the caps and possibly the socks to distinguish teams.

[schtee]

If i'm not mistaken, the idea came from Al Spalding, the sporting goods magnate and creator of the Doubleday myth, as a way to increase uniform sales.

There's a picture of a team rocking this idea in the Ken Burns gigantic "Baseball" book that accompanied the documentary.