Are Carlos Santana's baseball 'shorts' the next great step in uniform evolution or a huge mistake?
Fashion requires experimentation to ever move forward. The modern jean came when a San Francisco miner wanted to make his pants stronger by adding copper rivets to his denim pants. The punk look came from adding some rips and zippers. JNCO jeans, the famously baggy pants from the 1990s, were invented by repurposing military parachutes into clothing.*
*Note: This is not true.
Baseball players like to experiment, too. The famously ripped Ted Kluszewski ripped off the shoulders of his jerseys to show off those 'ceps and players in the 1970s enhanced their silhouettes by stretching out their stirrups to create narrow bands of color running across their calves.
Now, Carlos Santana has gotten in on the act by hitching up his pants well above the knees and ... well, I'm not quite sure what he's doing.
Carlos Santana, that’s a whole new level of @MLB style. @Indians pic.twitter.com/Ww5LPcrpO6
— Emily S (@emilys129) April 24, 2019
Is Santana trying to bring back shorts to baseball? Does he wish that he could turn his baseball pants into a sweet pair of cutoffs? (Alternately known as borts -- short for "baseball shorts.")
So, what say you: Is the future of baseball in short pants? Or is Santana's look going to be like the boot cut jean -- relegated to the dustbin of history?
Michael Clair writes for MLB.com. He spends a lot of time thinking about walk-up music and believes stirrup socks are an integral part of every formal outfit.
