A "brief"* history of unis

 (*In quotation marks for a reason. As we shall see.)

Because baseball is baseball and spring training is spring training, the Big Debate these days has nothing to do with RBI or ERA or whether the designated hitter is a crime against nature, or just a way for pitchers with Tee Ball swings to get out of embarrassing themselves.

No, the Big Debate is about something really important: Fashion.

Specifically, it's about the new uniforms Nike and Fanatics have foisted on MLB, which have been marketed as more lightweight and comfortable. Apparently, according to some observers (who might or might not have been observing a trifle closely), they're too lightweight.

Meaning you can actually see through the eggshell-colored pants. Or so those observers claim.

Boxers or briefs used to be the stock example of getting too personal with our athletic heroes, but now it may be a moot question. This assumes the uni pants actually do reveal the secrets beneath -- and if so, God forbid the player who occasionally decides commando is the way to go.

Me, I'm just wondering what some poor sap playing for the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1930s would have thought of all this. Which is where our "brief" (get it?) history of baseball  uniforms comes in. 

Know what they used to wear in the 1930s?

Wool. Hot, dripping, weighs-50-pounds-after-a-game wool.

Now imagine wearing that on a 90-degree day in St. Louis, where the humidity seems permanently set on Dryer Vent during the summer. Now imagine playing a doubleheader wearing that.

They used to call the Cards the Gas House Gang in those days. I'm guessing it was more like the Gassed House Gang by the time a day like that was through.

See-through pants?

"Lemme at 'em," Dizzy Dean might have said -- and not just because he was Dizzy Dean and see-through pants might have been his jam anyway.

A more lightweight uniform?

I'm guessing not only guys in the '30s would have been onboard with it, so would players of a later era who had to wear those form-fitting double-knits that to me always looked so incredibly uncomfortable. And let's not forget the Chicago White Sox during their notorious Beer League Softball Period in the mid-1970s.

At least the alleged see-through pants are pants. Those Beer League Sox actually played a game in shorts once.

"We looked like godd*** clowns," at least one of them surely must have said, for publication or not.

And what do the new lightweight unis look like?

Apparently we don't have to guess.