By By Adam Robinson – sports editor
Growing up, I've always considered baseball my favorite sport of all-time. I played baseball from kindergarten to my senior year I high school.
While I love just about all sports, baseball has always been my favorite.
I always grew up playing first base in Little League and then played third, outfield and then moved to pitcher where I stayed at the majority of my older years in the sport. I even played second base in Babe Ruth.
With JDCC's baseball season beginning the other day and high school teams beginning practice for their seasons to begin at the end of the month, there is always been one question concerning the sport that I never understood.
You see it beginning in at the high school level and then into the college and pros.
The question is, why do baseball coaches and managers wear uniforms like the players?
Baseball is the only sport that I know of that does this.
In other professional sports you do not see this.
In basketball, at the high school level the coach either dresses up in a nice suit or wears khakis with some kind of team colors or logo on it. It is the same with college and the NBA. Mostly on those levels they wear suits, but you get the picture.
In football, you have the college coaches wear polos and that is about the norm on the NFL level. Rarely now days will you see coaches in the NCAA wearing suits, but there have been some. For instance, I know Bear Bryant wore one, Gene Stallings, Howard Schnellenberger and others.
In hockey, coaches usually wear suits. But what makes baseball so different?
After looking some information up concerning this I found out that when former players began to take on teams as managers, they were unwilling to take the uniform out the element for them as former players as now current coaches.
But not all coaches abided by the rule. Connie Mack, legendary manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, liked suits but was not allowed on the field because if a person was not in uniform they were not allowed on the field. A 1957 rule requires coaches to be in uniforms, especially first and third base coaches.
So baseball is the lone exception in sports with regards to uniforms. Can you imagine seeing your favorite NFL team's coach or college team's coach in full pads and shoulder pads on? How about your favorite NBA team's coach in the baggy shorts or as in the old days in the short shorts they played in?
On a different note, I want to congratulate T.R. Miller's Wes McLellan for his signing to play at Belhaven on Wednesday and I wish all the area teams the best of luck in area games this week.
Until Wednesday when we meet again, God bless.