Jenks: Why do baseball managers wear uniforms and when did football coaches stop wearing suits?
From Jayson Jenks at The Athletic on March 7, 2019:
Not long ago, I started hunting for the answer to two questions I’ve always been curious about: Why do baseball managers wear uniforms? And why did football coaches stop wearing suits?
Newspaper archives led me to books while books led me back to newspaper archives — a bottomless fall into old photos and forgotten names. Finally, my search led me to two seemingly unconnected men: Connie Mack and Tom Landry.
Both were known for their stoic, reserved natures. Both had long, Hall-of-Fame coaching careers. And, most important to this story, both wore ties and stylish hats during games years after it was fashionable for coaches to do so.
Mack won (and lost) more games than any manager in baseball history; Landry is fourth on the NFL’s all-time wins list. Except for a 10-year gap between Mack’s last game with the Philadelphia Athletics and Landry’s first game with the Dallas Cowboys, their careers spanned almost 90 years. They coached through World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War; through the radio, the television and the desktop computer; and through 18 different presidents, from Grover Cleveland to George H.W. Bush.
Read the full article here (subscription required): https://theathletic.com/853761/2019/03/07/why-do-baseball-managers-wear-uniforms-and-why-did-football-coaches-quit-wearing-suits/
- Related link: Read our biography of Connie Mack at the SABR BioProject
Originally published: March 7, 2019. Last Updated: March 7, 2019.