Our voyage through multiple layers of meaning continues this week with the storied Cincinnati Redleg franchise.  The last sixty iterations of the Reds are somewhat lackluster from a comedy standpoint: never terrible, sometimes excellent, generally consistent.  Sure, they have Dusty Baker as a manager, but he has Bronson Arroyo’s elbow to bend back and forth like a Stretch Armstrong doll, so there’s no harm done.  The Big Red Machine seemed to destroy the league slowly, inexorably, and humorlessly.  There isn’t even a joke in Bill Bray.

There’s an unfortunate drawback for dealing with the older ballclubs: names didn’t appear on the backs of jerseys until 1960, when Bill Veeck was busy ruining the game.  The Reds didn’t get on board until 1964.  This eliminates some golden opportunities for historically-minded jokesters: there’s no showing off one’s literary chops by throwing on some Coke-bottle glasses and some Jim Brosnan gear, nor can one effectively rock the Dummy Hoy. It’s particularly tragic that there’s no Christy Mathewson jersey, because the combination of unwise trade, twilight appearance, and wonderful old-fashioned bagginess would make it pretty much unstoppable.  Alas.

Still, a poor craftsman blames the tools of his ancestors.  And so, undaunted, we proceed:

1966 Milt Pappas: The list could never start anywhere else.  Pappas was the key piece of the worst trade in Cincinnati history (or second – see Mathewson, above) when an over-the-hill 30 year-old Frank Robinson was sent to the Baltimore Orioles in the offseason.  Robinson went on to win the Triple Crown in 1966, and Milt Pappas went on to be Milt Pappas: winning a dozen or so games a year, posting a FIP in the low to mid threes, and complaining about everything from umpires to lower back pain to anyone within earshot.  Necessary for wearing this jersey: limb flailing.

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Continuing our examination of fashion sense for the intellectually demanding fan, we move on to Atlanta, home of the Braves since 1966.  Of course, when we think of Atlanta Braves baseball, most of us immediately think of the playoff streak, and the triumvirate of Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz.  Older fans will remember Aaron’s charge at 716.  Between these eras, there was Dale Murphy and not much else.  It’s strange that the modern Braves, after these peaks and valleys, have been so nondescript in comparison.

Still, there’s plenty of irony to be had in the baseball jerseys of the Atlanta Braves.

1966 Eddie Mathews: I am not a Braves fan, but I find Mathews fascinating.  Overshadowed by Aaron most of his career, Mathews feels like a afterthought Hall of Famer, the kind of guy people forget when they play Sporcle.  And yet you’ve got teams who don’t have a Hall of Famer at all, much less a dominant one.  Mathews played one year in Atlanta near the end of his career, and played well, making this a good jersey choice for the ironic and the unironic at the same time.

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A while ago I engaged in some sharing of my personal life, insofar as that personal life involved the Jason Kendall jersey in the back of my closet.  I’d like to continue that discussion in a direction that contains fewer Jason Kendall references toward a more broad consideration of how, exactly, the jersey relates to the fan experience.  I’ll predicate the conversation with two unassailable tenets:

• 1. Fans who remain fans during the lean years are truer, better, and are ethically superior to bandwagon fans.

• 2. Clothes make the man/woman.

Given that most of us lack the disposable income to purchase more than a couple of jerseys, it’s easy to understand why fans want to play it safe.  However, the jersey is an instantly identifiable opportunity to not only express individuality, but to dictate the extent of one’s fandom.  Carson touched on this concept in his recent essay on sabermetrics as hipsterism, presenting the hipster as cultural vanguard.  In this scenario, however, we are less interested in predicting and promoting what will be valuable in the future, but instead grounding our fandom in historical perspective.  The ironic jersey eschews popularity, instead celebrating the aspects of a team that a mere few would understand and appreciate.  It encapsulates the entirety of a franchise, the elation and the suffering, in a single terse word.

Today, we’ll begin our foray into fabric and collective sporting identity with the Arizona Diamondbacks.  Candidates are presented below; opinions and intolerable snubs are welcome in the comments.

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