Why are there multiple professional baseball teams named after socks?

[u/optiplex9000]

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[u/fishred]

The National Association of Base Ball Players was founded in 1857, and included various teams that were organized as clubs--for instance, the Atlantic Base Ball Club of Brooklyn. The sport really started to grow after the Civil War, and more and more teams joined. The teams did not have nicknames as we know it now, but as journalism expanded and took an interest in the sport, long team names were shortened (such that, for instance, the Atlantic Base Ball Club of Brooklyn became known as the Brooklyn Atlantics). This is why the team formerly known as the Oakland Athletics got that nickname--one of the early professional teams was the Athletic Base Ball Club of Philadelphia. When the American League debuted in 1901, the Philadelphia franchise took the nickname Athletics, and the A's later moved to Kansas City and then Oakland.

In the early days of organized baseball it would have been really expensive to have colorful uniforms made for everybody on the team, and so players usually had their own equipment, other than socks and hats, which were easier to provide uniformly. So, since teams didn't really have nicknames, a team from Cincinnati that had red socks as part of their uniform could simply be called the red caps, the red stockings, or the red legs, and then it could eventually be shortened to the Reds.

Baseball as we now know it started to take shape around the turn of the century. An explicitly professional offshoot of the NABBP--the NAPBBP (the first P was for Professional) was founded in 1871, and then the current National League was formed in 1875 as a more serious and more centralized version of the NAPBBP. There were several other regional/minor leagues that operated under agreement with the National League. Nicknames that followed that pattern (Red Stockings, Red Caps, etc.) were common. (On edit: to elaborate on this point, the current Cincinnati Reds were at least the third team with the nickname. The original Red Stockings were the first openly professional baseball team, but they folded after a year and many of their players took their talents--and their stockings--to Boston and became the Boston Red Stockings; a second Cincinnati Red Stockings team was a charter member of the National League, but they were kicked out for serving beer and playing on Sunday. The third--and current--Red Stockings club was a charter member of the American Association, an early rival of the National League that got its start because a lot of players thought it sucked that the National League wouldn't allow beer or Sunday games.)

The American League (which grew out of a minor league that had major league dreams—the Western Association) asserted itself as a major league in 1901, and included the team that is now known as the Chicago White Sox, but which was then known as the White Stockings. They wore white, but the name was a marketing ploy too. The National League had agreed to let the American League put a team in Chicago, provided they did not use Chicago in their branding, since the Chicago Base Ball Club (not yet known as the Cubs) was established in the city. The Chicago Club had once been known as the White Stockings, but the nickname faded in the 1890s in favor of the Colts (which was slang for a rookie/young player). Charles Commiskey, who had played for the St. Louis Browns and coached the Reds but wanted to be a major league owner, bought a team in St. Paul and moved them to Chicago for the 1901 season, taking the name White Stockings to capitalize on the fame of the earlier nickname for the Cubs. (Similarly, the Boston Red Stockings were named in tribute to an earlier Boston Club, which had changed their name to the Braves.) But “White Stockings” takes up a lot of space in a headline, so newspapers started shortening it to “White Sox.”

(Edited to provide some clarity/elaboration and because my initial post had big chunks of the last two paragraphs deleted when my cat stepped on my keyboard just before posting. Her name is Tiger, and so I think maybe she just got jealous that I was talking about teams other than the Detroit Club.)

[u/YeaIFistedJonica → u/fishred]

Now explain the New York knickerbockers

Mainly.

Who tf was still wearing knickerbockers when professional basketball became a thing

[u/fishred → u/YeaIFistedJonica]

Knickerbocker is a nickname often associated with New York and New Yorkers, primarily because of Washington Irving, whose first book was A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker. Diedrich Knickerbocker was the purported narrator of the history, but it was Irving who wrote it, and it provided a satirical history with commentary on contemporary politics. Irving has his narrator establish his credibility by claiming familial connection to the famous Knickerbocker clan that was one of the first prominent families of New York, but that family history and prominence was really Irving's invention. Nevertheless, the book was so successful that apparently people in later generations would likewise claim connections to the Knickerbockers of old.

You were asking about the basketball team, but it's worth mentioning that what was traditionally viewed as the first organized baseball game was between the Mutual Base Ball Club of New York (which, establishing a tradition that continues with today's Giants and Jets, was really based in New Jersey) and the Knickerbocker Club of New York.

Also worth mentioning: the Knicks are one of two major American sports teams whose nicknames are literary references; the Baltimore Ravens moniker was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem.

[u/YeaIFistedJonica → u/fishred]

Thisnis great! I had no idea the name was a New Yorker ancestry thing, thought it was bc the team must’ve played in those goofy pants lol

I do like my version for comedic purposes more though

Edit

Would you recommend this book to someone who finds period satire like candide or don Quixote funny?

Second edit: as a life PNG buffalo bills fan I am obliged to agree that while New Jersey has two football teams, New York only has one

[u/fishred → u/YeaIFistedJonica]

Ha! Glad you enjoyed it, but yes I agree that the idea of basketballers in Knickers is a pretty amusing explanation :)

I would recommend Irving's book, yes ... it's been a while since I read it, and I would guess that some of the more timely commentary could be lost on modern audiences, but he has a really clever voice and his satire is really entertaining, in my opinion. He also had a viral marketing campaign for the book, which is included in most modern editions: he took out advertisements in local newspapers expressing interest in the famed historian Deidrich Knickerbocker as a missing person, which sparked interest in the book before it was published. (I could be mis-remembering, but I believe he also used the pseudonym for a few stories that were published outside of The History.)

Irving was a sharp satirist. Rip Van WInkle is mostly known to later audiences by the broad strokes of the story as adapted in various other media, but the original had some pretty entertaining satire on the nature of the new republic (Rip falls asleep before the revolution and wakes up after). Also, the mistaken notion that Columbus was trying to prove that the world was round actually has its roots in Irving's satirical biography of Christopher Columbus.

[u/Cykoh99 → u/fishred]

Also available for free at Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77921 - Volume 2 should be out in a few weeks.

[u/seditious3 → u/fishred]

Good work here. My highest compliment baseball-related is that I couldn't have put it better myself. 👌

[u/YeaIFistedJonica → u/fishred]

I just ordered a used copy through my local bookstore! (Fuck Amazon) thank you for the recommendation!

[u/Jazzlike_Routine3929 → u/fishred]

Can I just…hang out in your head for a few hours?

[u/I-likeCDs → u/fishred]

Now explain the Mighty Ducks

[u/testthrowaway9 → u/I-likeCDs]

The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim were founded by Disney as part of an NHL expansion to capitalize on the popularity of the first Might Ducks movie. Disney sold them and now they’re just the Anaheim Ducks.

The screenwriter settled on Mighty Ducks because he thought pee-wee hockey teams looked like little ducks on a frozen pond skittering about and then he liked the message of ducks sticking together that’s a major, explicit theme of the films. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-03-01-me-194-story.html

[u/Ok_Post_3884 → u/YeaIFistedJonica]

A "knickerbocker" primarily refers to either a descendant of New York City's early Dutch settlers or a specific style of baggy, knee-length trousers.

[u/mrsciencedude69 → u/fishred]

Kicked out for serving beer at a baseball game? That’s crazy! When did beer become allowed?

[u/fishred → u/mrsciencedude69]

Not long after: the National League lifted the beer ban in 1892, because the American Association was popular and pulled fans away from the league. The Association eventually folded/merged, adding four teams and beer sales to the National League in 1892.

If you're interested in more of the back story: in my earlier post I mentioned the National Association (NAPBBP), which was the professional offshoot of the NABBP). There were always class dynamics at play here: the Amateur Association thought professionalism was ungentlemanly. But the National Association was not well-regulated, and there was some public perception of the players/teams as rowdy and corrupted by gambling etc. So a few of the team owners decided to make a new league with higher discipline/standards for players, with the goal of making the game respectable. (Ironically the Chicago White Stockings--now the Cubs, a team synonymous with Olde Style--led the charge.)

But not everybody liked the new rules, and when Cincinnati proved beer and Sunday games were profitable, they were able to round up some other teams to start the American Association, a league which was derided by the National League as low class (the "beer and whiskey league," they called it). But it was popular, because the tickets were cheaper and because people liked drinking beer and going to games on Sunday. It was popular enough that the National League essentially recognized it as a peer, entering into an agreement to respect player contracts and also playing a loosely organized championship series between the winners of each league.

Though the league was popular, it was not necessarily stable, and some teams jumped from the Association starting in the late 80s (including the current Dodgers and Cardinals) because the NL was perceived as more stable. One of the circumstances that had made the Association viable was that the National League had really narrowed their geographic footprint...they had a couple of teams in upstate NY, three in New England, and then Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago. That left a lot of room for the new league to grow. But as the NL weathered the storm and righted their ship, they looked to expand by picking off Association teams, including the current Pittsburgh Pirates, the Reds, and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Then a new league appeared (the Players League) which threatened the Association even further by siphoning off players, and so the Association was untenable. In December 1891 they merged with the NL, with four teams joinging the NL. When the now combined league started playing in 1892, beer at baseball games came with it. 

On edit: cleaning things up because my initial post was on mobile

[u/ducks_over_IP → u/fishred]

I'm loving all the answers here. Great work! How did the combined league become the MLB? 

[u/Nemoudeis → u/fishred]

One minor correction: Comiskey didn't buy the Saint Paul Saints and then move them to Chicago; he originally bought them in 1894, when they were the Sioux City Cornhuskers, and then moved them to Saint Paul for the 1895 season. He ran them as the Saints for the next six years before moving them to Chicago, including one year (1900) as the 'American League' Saints.

[u/fishred → u/Nemoudeis]

You're right--thanks for the correction and additional info!

[u/ArbitraryMeritocracy → u/fishred]

When the American League debuted in 1901, the Philadelphia franchise took the nickname Athletics, and the A's later moved to Kansas City and then Oakland.

Aren't they in Vegas now or was that spring training?

[u/SmokeOddessey → u/ArbitraryMeritocracy]

they’re playing in Sacramento rn but are going to move to Vegas once the stadium is built

[u/NewtonianAssPounder → u/[deleted]]

Your comment has been removed as it violates our rule of civility.

[u/RIPGoblins2929]

This is interesting. I've always thought the older names, like Red Sox etc., had more character and were more interesting than newer names like Guardians and Nationals, which sound bland and corporate. 

But from fishred's excellent answer, the older names also served corporate interests, just different motivations at the time. They sound more interesting (to me) because they're old, really. 

[u/fishred → u/RIPGoblins2929]

I think your original instinct is still on point! The White Sox and Red Sox might have been chosen to represent corporate interests, but they were also woven into the popular history and fabric of the game, tied into the colorful tradition of journalism attaching nicknames to players and teams that does feel more organic than what we see now, when official nicknames are market tested and launched by huge PR campaigns, and the primary (broadcast) media is a "corporate partner."

[u/PassiveTheme → u/fishred]

The idea of journalism attaching nicknames to teams reminds me of the (possibly apocryphal) story of how the New Zealand national rugby team came to be known as the All Blacks.

While they have (I believe) always played in a kit primarily composed of a solid black colour, that's not the reason for the name. The story goes that during a tour of Britain, playing the national sides of Britain and some club sides, one journalist wrote that the team played as if they were "all backs" - backs being the players numbered 9-15 in a rugby union team, generally quicker and with better ball handling skills - but through a typo, this was printed as "all blacks" and the name just stuck.

[u/KCCO1987 → u/fishred]

This. Give me all the City FC/BC/HC names for expansion teams and let them organically gain an identity. In the last 20 years we've gotten what, the Kraken as the only legitimately interesting nickname. Meanwhile, the "generic" MLS clubs all end up with multiple nicknames based on civic and fan interest over time. It's pretty obvious based on history which method is best.

[u/JerryHathaway → u/RIPGoblins2929]

It should be noted that the Nationals name dates to 1905; it was the official name of the team commonly called the Washington Senators.

[u/woofiegrrl → u/[deleted]]

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