Uniform History

On January twenty second, nineteen twenty nine, the New York Yeggs made a huge decision that forever changed the game of baseball and sports around the world. They decide put numbers on the back of their uniforms. Seems like a small moment, but try to think about all the sports we watch if players didn't have numbers, how odd what that would be. We dive into the history of jerseys to day on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reeese, your guide to a quick deep dive every day into sports history. One thing we often don't think about, but has for really but has forever changed the game, is the sport's uniform. As most of us are fans of multiple teams, we have some memorabilia that we wear to support our teams, whether at the game, watching on TV, or just going around our daily lives. We support our teams by what we wear. The question is how did the uniforms start? How did they become what we all know to day. To know more about this, we have to go all the way back. Did the ancient city of Olympia, Greece? Were you the where the Olympics were born? But these were no ordinary sports uniforms. As we stepped back in time, these athletes were running for the glory of the gods, men virginal women clothed in nothing but determination and race for glory. Yes, these athletes were naked. Would mix sports very different to day. But since we have lots of things that change since the ancient Olympics, we go all the way to the modern Olympics in eighteen sixty nine. Now the track and field uniforms were lightweight but covered everything they needed. The true origins of all the jerseys we hear we wear from baseball to football, basketball, soccer and any other sport is a true evolution of the game. It has never been consistent. It grows as the popularity grows. In baseball, it began where they just wore whatever they were wearing, and as players began to slip, they created cleats. As their pants began to get caught, they began to roll them up under their socks and wear loose jerseys so they could have full motion and wear loose shirts so they would have full motion to throw the ball. And one big change was the Yankees in nineteen twenty nine. On January twenty second, made the decision to change their uniforms and put numbers on the back. This is very common today to identify the player on the field for Saasticians and fans a light, but at the time it was unusual and the reason they did this and it wasn't like today where you got to pick your number. It was the batting order that day. So Babe Ruth where in the famous number three is due to him batting third in the lineup. And this was common practice for other teams to adopt as it made it easy to identify the players as you would not always be able to see their face, but you can see the number on their jersey. And it took all the way till nineteen sixty when the White Socks put names on the back of their jerseys to identify the players even more. And we look at other sports such as basketball, and basketball was created in a gym at a YMCA, so they were wearing traditional gym clothes at the time, which Dick consists of shorts in a T shirt, the same as in baseball. The play of the game dictate what they wore. Their arms were moved a lot and running into multiple players. You did not want loose forming uniforms so that why they have more of a sleeveless design so they could move their arms completely free and are more form fitting than baseball uniforms as they contact with players multiple times a game and shorts were common due to the amount of movement and running involved. Over time, they developed synthetic materials to make it more breathable for the athletes, and the Harlem Globe Trotters were very keen and adapting the uniforms. They even put numbers on their jerseys before the Yankees did in nineteen sixty and in hockey they developed their jerseys again to the sport. Their jerseys are called sweaters because they represent a sweater that was often worn at the beginning of hockey's creation because they was played on ice outdoors where it's very cold. Football was very similar to baseball as their pants were hiked up due to getting stepped on while running and getting wet or weighed down with the wetness of the grass and had to be created bigger as they added more pads to the game, but form fitting as to not get tackled or have someone grab their jerseys as we still see to this day and today technology is used in almost all sports apparel, whether it's the fabric, things included in the fabric, such as tracking devices being tailor made to athletes, and of course being a high merchandise sailor. Without uniforms, we wouldn't know what team to root for. We wouldn't be able to support our team. It would change how we view sports today. We may not know exactly how everything got invented, but we can narrow it down to helping the sport improve every day and help us support our teams as well. Thank you for listening to today's Daily Sports History. If you want to see photos of today's episode, follow us on Twitter, Instagram. If you want to see a video, you can go on Twitter. You can subscribe to us on YouTube and come back tomorrow for more Daily Sports History