Touching the Bases with Nate Eastman: Stirrup Swag

In baseball there are many different types of accessories that players wear to add a little flair to their appearance when playing in a game. Players use the term “Baseball Swag” when they describe their appearance and accessories when playing. Today I wanted to talk about the baseball stirrups, which is one of my favorite components to players Baseball swag.

Stirrups are uniform socks worn by baseball players up until the mid 1990’s before most professional players began to wear their pants down or wore solid colors socks. Stirrup socks are worn on top of long socks called "sanitaries," the most common color worn is white. This is because the white sock was cheaper to replace and the white sock could be changed more frequently.

The stirrup sock lacked a foot, instead having a loop, which fits within the instep of the foot, exposing the part of the white under sock underneath. Over the years, the stirrup loop tended to get longer, exposing more of the white under sock, creating a more unique style to baseball

There are also many different styles of stirrups that you can wear. You can wear the

Traditional 9-inch cut to expose more of the white of the sock, or you can wear the lower 4-inch exposing less of the sock.

My favorite pair of stirrups were the pair I wore at my school this past year at Finger Lake Community College because I thought they looked sharp with our white jerseys with the solid blue white stripe and lime green strip.