Learning to Wear Baseball Stirrups April 11 2018, 1 Comment
Baseball stirrups are socks that are worn by baseball players. In the 1990s, players began to wear their pants down to the ankles and that game birth to a new trend that gained popularity all over the world. One of the reasons why stirrup socks are such an important part of the uniform is that they give the players a distinctive look. Back in the days, a high sock was needed because the players used to wear knickers. The stirrups became a team identity symbol as they used to display a team’s stripes, logos, as well as colors.
Stirrup socks are basically worn on top of long socks that are known as sanitaries that are white. Back when the trend started, it was thought that colored socks caused blood poisoning, so an additional sock was introduced to stop that. Over the course of years, the stirrup loop got a bit longer and started to expose the white undersock that gave the look, which you get to see again. These days, some of the players prefer to wear full pants, so the stirrups are not that common now. This makes the players wonder how one is supposed to wear baseball stirrup socks. If you are new to baseball and don’t know how to wear stirrups, you have come to the right place because the article will teach you just that. Read on.
Things You'll Need
- Baseball pants
- Baseball stirrups
- White tube socks
How to Wear Stirrup Socks
- The first thing that you need to do is see the length of pant. The reason is that if your baseball pants are cuffed at the ankles, there is no use to wear the stirrups, because only one or two inches of it will be exposed. Stirrups are more suitable for people who wear pants that are cuffed at the knees. If you want to opt for a traditional look, you can wear the pants on your upper shin.
- Once you are done with that, wear a pair of white socks over the calf because that way you won’t be showing any skin. Make sure that the socks are new so that they are elastic in nature and won’t sag.
- The next step is to wear the stirrups over the socks. They are colored and cover the lower leg with a skinny loop that goes around the foot. Make sure that the loop is aligned. Two things determine how high you will wear your stirrups and they are: the length of your pants, and your personal preference. Some of the players only want the narrow part of the loop to be visible between the shoes and cuffs, whereas others want the sleeves to show as well. Whichever way you opt for, the stirrups should be pulled under the pants.
- The last step is to check if the stirrups are gripping your limb because if it’s not, then that can be a safety issue and can cause a player to trip and fall.
Comments
butch on
You didn’t mention that stirrup socks have a front and back. The front “cutout” (where the white sanitary sock is exposed) is lower than the back cutout, usually by an inch or two. So wear the higher “cutout” in the back. Otherwise your baseball stirrups will look strange, or at least not like traditional stirrups have been worn. Also worth mentioning is that stirrup socks used to be worn by most football and basketball teams.. The were the “game socks” with a very low-cut stirrup, and as in baseball had the team colors and often stripes.. Very cool! The difference was that in football and basketball the player wore a white sweat sock on the outside of the stirrup. The loss of stirrup socks in baseball has meant the loss of a signature look, loss of a major team identifier based on colors, stripe patterns etc (think “Red Sox” “White Sox”). Teams now look like they’re playing in pajamas. And letting some players wear “high socks” and others not makes for a very un-uniform uniform. Leo Durocher of the Chicago Cubs actually had a “stirrup stick” next to the dugout to make sure his players’ stirrup lengths all matched. At least the NFL still enforces uniform sock rules.