Sports Jerseys

Jersey is a crown dependency island of the UK where the people have been knitting great wool sweaters for centuries. These tight knit warm sweaters were initially used as an inner layer by rural seamen before evolving into common outerwear. Jersey sweaters spread about the UK and northern Europe as the country’s trading industry rose in prominence during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Their popularity gained so much, the name “jersey” became synonymous with “sweater” in countries as far away as the United States during the 1850s. When American football developed, players needed strong, insular uniforms, and thick wool jerseys did the job..

Athletic jerseys bore increasingly little resemblance to their bulky ancestral tops. Just as the name had become a synonym for sweater, it soon became a synonym for athletic uniform. Lightweight baseball shirts were often called “jerseys” despite being generally made of flannel and incorporating short sleeves, buttons, and collars. Canadian hockey sweaters began being called jerseys. Americans used jerseys when they were playing football, then baseball, then hockey.

Happy Birthday Puck

The word “puck” was first recorded in the February 7, 1876 edition of the Montreal Gazette. The NHL regards this date as the hockey puck’s birthday, even though they were in use for decades before.

Early pucks were made from frozen cow dung. The first rubber pucks were made from lacrosse balls, which were sliced in thirds and only the middle third was used. Now they are constructed of vulcanized rubber.

Players are required to use frozen pucks to reduce bouncing and make them easier to control. These tend to thaw quickly and are replaced by officials on average of 12 per game. Don Rickles might have called people who started the NHL strike 'hockey pucks'.

Baseball Clothing Rules

Basketball and hockey coaches wear business suits on the sidelines. Football coaches wear team-branded shirts and jackets and often ill-fitting pleated khakis. Baseball managers are the only ones who wear the same outfit as their players.

It goes back to the earliest days of the game, when the person known as the manager was the business manager, the guy who kept the books in order and the road trips on schedule.

The person we call the manager today, who arranges the roster and decides when to pull a pitcher, was known as the captain. He was usually also on the team as a player. There were also a few captains who didn’t play for the team and stuck to making decisions in the dugout, and they usually wore suits. With the passing of time, it became less common for the captain to play and on most teams they had strictly managerial roles. The rules do not state that a manager should wear a uniform or not.