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Football’s lockout drags on.  After an immensely successful season, the NBA might be in a coma until January.  Yet Major League Baseball is experiencing rare labor peace and a surge in attendance.  While the #1 with a bullet NFL and the well dressed NBA sit on the shelf, now’s as good a time as ever for Baseball to try and regain some of its lost style & charisma.   Y’know, that stuff that was on display during innings 1-8 in Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns.

Above Photo Credit – Andrew Malone

1. Encourage Managers to lose the uniforms

The Marlins recently brought 80-year-old Jack McKeon back as their skip.  The man is not going to pinch hit.  Let him wear a suit.  Baseball managers have been stuck wearing the same getup as their athletes ever since coat and tie favoring Connie Mack (who started managing in the 19th century) finally hung up his oxfords.  Let the managers wear business attire like their NHL and NBA counterparts.  Besides, who wouldn’t want to see what linen blend two-piece Joe Maddon wears with his specs?  (Suggestion:  Swap out the heavy black frames for horn rimmed.)

2. Make the stadiums look more nostalgic and less like amusement parks.

For all the bright plastic, bounce houses, and ever present souvenir stands, kids just aren’t taking to baseball like they used to.  One of the few things baseball has is its ties to a time when things were classic and rarely trend driven or disposable.  Ball parks should look like brick and mortar shrines.  Not like a Chuck-E-Cheese.

3. Embrace the Throwbacks.  Eliminate the solid color alternate jersey

Baseball went through a period in the 90s – early 2000s where half the teams looked like their uniforms were designed by No Fear.  Less is more.  Mute the colors (unless they’re awesomely bright throwbacks), look to the early 20th century for inspiration.  Ditch those blocky contrast solid color jerseys as a team’s alternate.

4. Turn Back the Clock Night = Dress the part

Fans who shows up on turn-back-the-clock-night dressed at the same level of how fans used to dress when going to the park should get to enjoy similar period pricing on food and beer.  Flying used to be glamorous.  So did going to the ballpark.  Don’t wear a costume, but it’s not a bad excuse to get your date in a set of pearls and you in a jacket.

5. Get Bud a Stylist

It’s no shocker that Commissioner Selig was at one time a used car salesman whose team played in a corrugated aluminum stadium.  It’s never too late Bud.  Lose the pleats, go down (at least) one size in the jackets, and drop the waist on those trousers below your navel.  Maybe stop sharing a barber with Bill Gates.  If Bud wants to embrace the aged look?  Get that man a couple of bow ties.

Any other suggestions for how America’s Pastime can step up their style game?  Leave those below…

Everybody has one.  A movie you own on DVD, maybe even had on VHS once upon a time, and it’s your standby entertainment for those days when you want to watch something that’s:

1. Familiar
2. Awesome

It’s a movie that makes you feel good.  Something that’s probably a little predictable, has plenty of chemistry between the actors, and is easily quotable.  Maybe you identify with it, maybe you don’t.  Maybe it speaks to something deeper within your, or it’s shallow as all hell.  But it’s that movie you reach for time and time again when you want to let all your obligations go, zone out a bit, and completely relax.  You might even have favorite and least favorite scenes picked out.  And there’s no shame in skipping ahead to the best ones.

If you’ve spent more than a few weeks on this website, it’s not tough to figure out my own personal go to movie.  I reference it enough.  Ocean’s 11.  12 and 13 too, but the first re-make with Clooney and the rest is tops.  Yeah, it’s candy.  But so what…

………………………….

A close second is Casino Royale.  Not nearly as lighthearted as the suited up caper flicks of the Ocean’s trilogy (i.e. Benedict never tortures Danny Ocean by mangling his testicles) but it’s hard to argue with this scene on the train between Bond and Vesper.  Third place goes to the first six innings or so of the made for PBS documentary Baseball by Ken Burns.  That thing got me through some very poor and not the smoothest of times.

We all have one.  And it’s probably something that cinema snobs would turn their nose up at.

So what’s yours?

If you‘d like, leave your pick in the comments section below.  No slights or questioning someone else’s favorite here either (unless it’s like, The Music Man or something).  We all have different cinematic forms of comfort food.
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Baseball has problem.  Forget the fact that mid-season NFL games are whomping World Series games in the ratings, the most interesting thing to talk about after the Giants won their first series in half a century was…

…the bow tie that guy wore.

That guy was the stiff as a triple starched shirt Ken Rosenthal.  He’s the senior baseball writer for FoxSports.com, and the guys at the TV division decided to do what is almost always a bad decision when it comes to print fellows.  They stuck him on TV.  Now most of America knows Ken as the baseball version of a sideline reporter for Fox.  Only baseball doesn’t really have sidelines, so poor Ken was stuck doing most of his “reporting” from awkward locations like row E.

Ken actually wore a bow tie a few times during the world series.  And unlike Giant’s reliever Brian Wilson’s beard, Ken’s bow tie wasn’t odd in a good way.  Next time Ken, follow the flow chart* you see below.  Follow it and you’ll avoid the pitfalls that come with wearing a bow tie when and where you have no business doing so.

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*patent pending**
**not really
Your comments, as always, are welcome below.

If you watched the All-Star game the other night, you saw another example of how the President might not dress casually in a very progressive fashion.  C’mon though, are you gonna bag on a guy who’s tie dimples are a thing to be envious of?

The fact that President Obama seems a little behind the times in the casual-wear department shouldn’t surprise anyone.  He’s donned the same style of jeans before and he seems to always play basketball with his t-shirt tucked into a pair of nylon windpants. He’s even acknowledged the jeans in the past.  But look, the guy has potential.  He’s even looked good tossing out the first pitch at a ball game before.

Here’s my take:  The bright white running shoes didn’t help.  And yes the jeans were tapered.  His legs also looked ultra skinny due to the big White Sox Jacket he was wearing.  Which I’m guessing was a cover for the 4 pounds of Kevlar the Secret Service had him in.  Give the guy credit for proudly displaying his South Side loyalty while in front of baseball fans across the globe.

So, if that’s what he’s comfortable in, then so be it.  But just for the record… if he would have come to me and said: “Hey, I don’t have any time to pick out my clothes for the first pitch tonight… you got a sec to do that for me?”  Here’s what I would have tossed on his Air Force One Clothes Valet.
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The Jacket:  Chicago White Sox Authentic Premier Jacket – $119.99

Keep the Jacket, and the Bullet Proof Vest Underneath it.
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The Jeans:  Levis 527 Low Rise Boot Cut – $48.80

A little more room than a 501 so he can get a good leg kick to throw a strike.  Not too low rise and not too boot cut.  For the President we won’t go too dark blue, just… medium-dark blue.  We don’t want to stray too far from the POTUS’s casual fashion center
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The Shoes:  PF Flyers Center Hi Re-Issue

Want to lock up the Young Adult Men Demo?  Wear the same shoes Benny from The Sandlot wore to out run The Beast.  They’re cheap and New Balance owns them… which seems to be what President Obama likes to wear anyway.

There’s what I would have put out for the President to put on.  And it ain’t much different than what he wore.

(Pic from the Chicago Sun Times… and wait… is that a crease in his jeans?)