Uniform Fetish

November 21, 2006 8:45 PM

A blog dedicated to American sports uniforms may not sound that enthralling but when you discover it was conceived and written by Paul Lukas of Inconspicious Consumption fame it suddenly becomes a hell of a lot more attractive. For easy access into this world of minutiae try starting here.
posted by meech (12 comments total)

I don't know about that uniform business, but I do believe the Inconspicious Consumption link is about to dissolve my entire evenin'. Very interesting read.
posted by katillathehun at 8:58 PM on November 21, 2006

His Espn.com column is nearly always good. I'm a proud UniWatcher.
posted by kyleg at 9:05 PM on November 21, 2006

I really wouldn't count myself as a sports fan (I'll watch with intensity if my St. Louis home teams are in the playoffs, but that's about it), but I find uniforms and playing venues fascinating (the older and/or quirkier, the better). I recently found Uni Watch and immediately fell in love. Lukas's and his readers' attention to detail is amazing, and I'm finding myself interested in and caring about the amazing trivialities of the aesthetics of athletics.
posted by zsazsa at 9:24 PM on November 21, 2006

I don't know how I bought Lukas' Inconspicuous Consumption book, but it's one that I treasure. From Hydrox cookies to coleslaw juice to that thing that they measure your feet in in the shoe store it's full of excellent, wry, and pithy observations about the sometimes overlooked objects and products with which we live.
posted by Turtles all the way down at 11:15 PM on November 21, 2006

Oops--that would be "Kraut Juice" for those in the know.
posted by Turtles all the way down at 11:17 PM on November 21, 2006

I haven't thought about Inconspicuous Consumption in a long time, but I don't think I'll ever forget about Colgate Tartar Control Plus Whitening toothpaste vs. Colgate Whitening With Tartar Control toothpaste.
posted by samh23 at 11:18 PM on November 21, 2006

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past year, you're probably aware that the folks at Heinz are now selling green ketchup.

I had no idea. It is fine to live under this safe roof of stone.

Anyway, sports uniforms: The dark side of self- and social perception: black uniforms and aggression in professional sports:

Black is viewed as the color of evil and death in virtually all cultures. With this association in mind, we were interested in whether a cue as subtle as the color of a person's clothing might have a significant impact on his or her behavior. To test this possibility, we examined whether professional football and ice hockey teams that wear black uniforms are more aggressive than those that wear nonblack uniforms. An analysis of the penalty records of the National Football League and the National Hockey League indicate that teams with black uniforms in both sports ranked near the top of their leagues in penalties throughout the period of study. On those occasions when a team switched from nonblack to black uniforms, the switch was accompanied by an immediate increase in penalties. The results of two laboratory experiments indicate that this finding can be attributed to both social perception and self-perception processes--that is, to the biased judgments of referees and to the increased aggressiveness of the players themselves. Our discussion focuses on the theoretical implications of these data for an understanding of the variable, or "situated," nature of the self.

Full article (PDF) here.
posted by pracowity at 12:44 AM on November 22, 2006

Very nice, especially because the first thing I saw when I clicked on the first link was a uniform from the hapless heroes of my youth, the '50s Senators! (Albie Pearson was rookie of the year in '58, and of course the Senators couldn't hang on to him—next year he went to the Orioles and then was drafted by the expansion Angels, poor guy.) Thanks for the link.
posted by languagehat at 5:44 AM on November 22, 2006

His favorite NHL uniform is the Canadiens whites? That there is a credibility problem..
posted by Chuckles at 9:24 AM on November 22, 2006

Languagehat, and anyone else who likes this stuff, I recommend a book called "The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubblegum Book," which is chock full of great stuff about players from the '50s and '60s and their trading cards. Albie Pearson is just one of many players featured.

Somewhere in the pile of stuff at home, I have an entire run of Beer Frame, all of which were purchased at the late lamented See Hear in the East Village...
posted by AJaffe at 9:24 AM on November 22, 2006

Awesome link, thanks!
posted by jckll at 2:30 PM on November 22, 2006

As also seen in Slate.
posted by jjg at 5:56 PM on November 22, 2006 [1 favorite]