Yesterday’s ESPN column generated so much response that I’ve created an FAQ page for it. To see it, scroll down to the entry immediately after this one.
One comment that came up repeatedly — and occasionally comes up in other e-mail I receive — was that I’m a prime exemplar of “the media’s east-coast sports bias” (it’s particularly amusing when someone thinks this is why I don’t like Nike in general or Oregon’s football uniforms in particular). As I usually explain in such instances, hey, no bias here — my favorite state is Wisconsin, I rooted for the Kareem-led Lakers when I was a kid, and my favorite NFL team is the 49ers, for chrissakes.
There’s one area, however, where the charge is at least somewhat accurate: Since the major-level pro sports leagues and big-time collegiate sports all started in the east and midwest, I’m sometimes guilty of forgetting that there’s plenty of sports history — and, hence, uniform history — out west. It’s just that most of it was at the minor league level. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
That point was recently driven home to me when Bob Andrews tipped me wise to a site chronicling San Diego’s sports history. Can’t say I’d ever given much thought to that concept, or to the notion that San Diego even had a particularly deep sports history. But I’m gonna try to make amends by highlighting some of the better uni-related details from the site.
Let’s start with the city’s baseball history. Check out the creased pants in this shot (which supposedly dates from 1887, although I have my doubts about that), and the amazing front bibs in this one (of more believable 1887 vintage). You get a real feel for the mix of baseball and western-style architecture in this shot, and San Diego’s long history as a Naval port city is plenty evident in this one (taken aboard the U.S.S. Alert in 1918).
Of course, San Diego’s biggest baseball legacy is the Padres, who were Pacific Coast League team for over 30 years before the club’s current MLB incarnation. Check out these pics from 1936, 1948, 1949 (love that zipper), 1950, and 1957. Cool stadium shot here, too.
Turning to football, Russ High School sure liked that big “R” on its jersey, as seen in these great shots from 1902, 1903 (dig those crazy-ass socks on the dude at far left), and 1904. Meanwhile, check out the San Diego High player on the right in this 1921 shot: He’s got some some sort of tape wrapped around his thighs, his hip pads are tied together, and he’s got his keys hanging from his belt (which doesn’t match his teammate’s belt color). I sense the work of an overprotective mom.
Skipping forward several decades, it’s pretty obvious that those early Chargers uniforms were miles ahead of what the rest of the AFL was wearing. Can you even figure out who their plain-helmeted opponents are here? Incredibly enough, it’s the 1962 Oakland Raiders, hopelessly uni-outclassed. Similarly, who are the Chargers playing here? Answer: the 1963 Boston Patriots (who supposedly had Pat Patriot on their helmets, but I guess the AFL had some sloppy quality control).
There’s a lot more here, including boxing, soccer, cycling, tennis, golf, rowing, even surfing. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you San Diego — Uni Watch sports capital of the day!
Raffle Reminder: Lots of people had the day off yesterday for MLK Day, so you may have missed the announcement that we’re doing another Distant Replays raffle. For full details, scroll down to the “ITEM! January Raffle” section of yesterday’s entry.
Uni Watch News Ticker: Here’s something I haven’t seen before: padded/quilted uni numbers — additional views here and here — as worn by the UK’s Farnham MH Knights (whose head coach, Steve Rains, provided the photos). … The minor league Cincinnati Cyclones, who are affiliated with the Canadiens, wore Canadiens-themed jerseys on Friday night. “I thought the front of the jerseys looked really nice,” says Kris Rose, who provided these photos. “The backs, however, were a bit of a train wreck. The stripes going around the jersey made the numbers REALLY hard to read when the team was playing. Some sort of outlining would have helped a lot.” … Latest racer-backed women’s hoops team: Colgate (with thanks to Stewart Small). … Duke’s David McClure had a nameplate typo on Sunday night (good catch by Matt Palombi).
January 16th, 2007
The other day I got an e-mail from Matt Kowalski. The subject line read, “The only sport where the winner gets the loser’s uniform…” When I opened the e-mail, the sentence was completed: “is rowing.”
The rest of the e-mail read like so:
“Shirt racing” is the way things are done at all major college rowing championships. If you win the regatta, then you get ALL THE JERSEYS/HENLEYS/UNIFORMS of the other crews you beat. If a rower is lucky enough, he can get on a run — the U of Wisconsin recently had a class (‘03, maybe?) that won four consecutive Eastern Sprints titles; the few kids in those boats wound up with lots of Harvard/Yale/Princeton gear. I think there’s a legend of some guys from Penn in the early or mid-’90s that came away with 150+ shirts over four years, between Eastern Sprints, IRAs (Intercollegiate Rowing Association), and dual races.
I rowed at a small club school (Pitt) and also spent a season on the Wisconsin crew after transferring. After every race at Pitt, I had to give up my shirt. At Wisconsin, however, I had the satisfying feeling of watching a Purdue rower dump a huge laundry pile of Purdue jerseys right in front of out trailer after all our boats spanked them at the Big 10 regatta.
Then there’s the story of Yale’s silk sash. At one point in the ’70s, their crew was so slow, and giving away so many of their jerseys with the real silk stripe, that they had to switch to screening the stripe onto the jersey, just to save money.
Shirt racing, incidentally, is one of the reasons why men’s rowing is NOT an NCAA sport. Betting by NCAA student-athletes is outlawed, and shirt racing is essentially a bet. But under the IRA (which is 12 years older than the NCAA, by the way), it’s no problem.
There’s no professional rowing (anymore). No money to be made in
the sport. Yet Wall Street types from Ivy League schools put off big-$$$ careers to live like hobos trying to make national teams. Shirt racing encapsulates this spirit of the sport. In dual races between 8s, they actually pull the 63-ft. shells together at the finish line and give over the shirts right thereon the water. International rowing doesn’t really have shirt racing, but there’s a long tradition of trading gear at the end of a World Cup-level regatta. When the East German crews were winning in the ’70s, one of their henley jerseys could command barter of a lot of Western-issued sweats/warm-ups/gear.
Interesting protocol, although it raises as many questions as it answers, at least for me. Here’s the ensuing back-and-forth I had with Kowalski:
Uni Watch: Do the winners wear the losers’ jerseys, or do they all go into a trophy case, or what?
Matt Kowalski: They don’t usually get displayed or anything, other then being worn at practice or other regattas as a symbol of speed. I lost the few that I won at Wisconsin. I think a lot of successful rowers just throw theirs in a drawer. It’s not a sport with a lot of glamour.
UW: I assume women’s rowing teams don’t do the uni-trade thing, right? And this is why women’s rowing is an NCAA sport?
MK: Women’s rowing is a NCAA sport because of Title IX. It’s the logical choice when you need to add 50-70 female students to balance football, and has grown by about tenfold since the 1990s. The women tend to wear unisuits, so there’s not as much trading.
UW: What does a typical crew jersey look like, anyway? Is there any standard template or style for what it’s is “supposed” to look like (tailoring, colors, home-vs.-road ettiquette, etc.), or is it just a freestyle kind of thing? Is there an acknowledged “classic,” like Yankee pinstripes or something like that?
MK: For years the rowing world went with the Oxford/Cambridge standard design, which was basically a “ringer” T-shirt with a few buttons at the collar. The diagonal stripe and the school letter are common, too. Remember, rowing is generally a conservative sport, and it’s horrible for spectators, so unis have never been a huge deal (outside of your shirt being taken by a faster crew). That said, with the increase in rowing apparel companies in the past few years, there’s a lot of radical designs making their way to the water. Princeton’s women wore tiger stripe unisuits last spring for a few races, and the German national team’s sponsorship by Deutsche Telecom led to some outrageous pink unis.
There’s no home vs. road. There are seasonal uni differences, fall vs, spring. Shirt racing usually takes place in the spring. In the fall, the races are 4000-6000 meters. Because of the longer time spent on the water (I’ve had races where I was out there for three hours with delays), the gear is long tights and long-sleve tech shirts made of Coolmax.
Another rowing uni phnomenon is the Stevenson. These are pullover jackets cut short in the front and very long in the back. The long flap in the back provides extra padding and waterproofing when tucked into the trou (for some reason, what everybody else calls “compresion shorts,” rowers call “trou”). Stevensons also have shoulder gussets to allow for the arms to reach out when placing the oar in the water. Stevenson is a company that became identified with the jackets, like Kleenex for tissues. Most of the nice ones today are made by Boathouse Sports.
J & L was the first company to do nothing but rowing gear, and they do all kinds of custom embroidery and color schemes for crews; most varsity programs have a new design each year. Clubs are on a tighter budget, and for fall races a trip to the discount store for wacky gear is common (different boats will wear different shirts). The Head of the Charles in Boston is the unoffical world rowing convention every year, and a lot of club crews make up specific gear/hats/glasses/headbands just for that race.
UW: What about logo-emblazoned oar blades?
MK: Yeah, I guess that could be considered part of the uniform. Most big regattas will have a T-shirt for sale showing all the blades of the different schools. They’re pretty cool. Down by the docks where crews lay their blades before they get in the boat, you can often find pile after pile of oars next to each other, and it makes a kind of rowing rainbow.
––––––––––
Wow — big thanks to Matt for that crash course in rowing aesthetics. Here he is at Head of the Charles in 1999. “I liked wearing orange over my tech shirt,” he says, “because I was a big fan of the Dutch rowers at the time.”
And just to put a characteristic Uni Watch spin on this, it will come as no surprise to any of you that I managed to turn up this photo.
Uni Watch News Ticker: Good story here (and additional details here) about a Sikh kid in Pennsylvania who successfully challenged a ruling that he couldn’t wear his patka while playing soccer (with thanks to Jeremy Brahm). … Reprinted from yesterday’s Comments section: Amazing polka-dot socks on the Collins Hill High girls’ hoops team in Georgia. … Todd Davis reports, “Iverson was just on local TV complaining that the Nuggets don’t have any colored or striped socks going on. ‘We’ll fix that,’ he said.” … A few gazillion people wrote in to inform me that Cal’s Marshawn Lynch didn’t have a nameplate on his jersey in last night’s Holiday Bowl. I’m not sure which is more depressing: the lack of quality control or the fact that so many people were actually watching the Holiday Bowl.
Long Weekend Schedule: We’ll have an open thread tomorrow, a short entry on Sunday, another open thread on Monday, and then back to regular content on Tuesday. OK? OK.
December 29th, 2006
