Why baseball managers wear uniforms

[JDubs]

Ever wonder why baseball managers wear uniforms? Well wonder no longer...

"It's a little like Alice in Wonderland, through the looking glass, where in baseball things are reversed from the way they are in other sports," said John Thorn, the official historian of Major League Baseball. "In trying to explain the reason for it, folklore comes in."

Thorn knows about the traditions of baseball, and the reasons for them, as well or better than anyone alive. He said that in the earliest years of the game in the 19th century, "The person who was called the manager of a team was the business manager -- he was the person who made sure that the receipts were paid and that the train schedules were met. He didn't make any decisions about what went on during a game.

"The person who did that was called the captain. He did what a manager does today, but he also played. So at first, the person we would today call a manager wore a uniform because he was a participant in the game."

[sOURCE:http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/23/opinion/greene-baseball-manager-uniforms/index.html?hpt=hp_c2]

There is a lot more to the article. It's worth a read.

[OFFNY]

o

...... "Baseball is the only sport where the head coach/manager actually wears a uniform. Can you imagine Bill Parcells standing on the sidelines in a Giants helmet and shoulder pads?" .......

George Carlin

[DrungoHazewood]

Ever wonder why baseball managers wear uniforms? Well wonder no longer...

[sOURCE:http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/23/opinion/greene-baseball-manager-uniforms/index.html?hpt=hp_c2]

There is a lot more to the article. It's worth a read.

Haven't had a chance to read the whole article, but, yea, it was probably 1900 or maybe even later before most managers weren't player-managers. Over time baseball has gotten more complicated and specialized, and fewer and fewer people were dual-hatted. GMs didn't even exist as a formal position in any organization until the 1920s, the manager and the owner and scouts and word-of-mouth among various folks kind of tag-teamed it. Nobody thought it was particularly weird that Connie Mack was manager/owner/GM of the A's, not until the end of his career when he was 88 and senile and couldn't do any of those jobs well.

Cap Anson was called that most of his life (with "Baby" and "Pop" on either end of his playing career) because he was the Captain of the White Stockings/Colts, which was basically the manager with a healthy dose of GM responsibilities thrown in.

o

...... "Baseball is the only sport where the head coach/manager actually wears a uniform. Can you imagine Bill Parcells standing on the sidelines in a Giants helmet and shoulder pads?" .......

George Carlin

I don't think baseball managers wearing uniforms is really any less silly than 56-year-old football coaches with a beer gut wearing a team sweatshirt, jogging pants, and a headset straight out of a 1980s rap battle.