Quick: What’s wrong with the picture below?
Okay, how about this?
The answer is: Neither of them are correct. In fact, they both have anachronisms in them: the Ruth jersey, for example, has the famous “NY” logo on the jersey itself, something that they didn’t do until 1936, by which point Ruth was retired.
But the biggest lie on these replica jerseys: they have names on the back. To the casual fan, perhaps, this is not anything out of the ordinary. After all, teams have been having the names of the players on the back of their uniforms forever, right?
They’d be wrong. In fact, the first time any MLB team had names on the back of the uniform was in 1960, when the White Sox started doing it.
So, in other words, Babe Ruth never wore a Yankees’ jersey with his name on the back (no Yankees, not even those of the present day, have their names on the back, with the exception of some recent batting practice uniforms). Ted Williams never had his name on the back. And, quite frankly, if you don’t know immediately that a “3″ on the back of a Yankees uniform means Ruth and/or a “9″ on a Red Sox uniform means Ted Williams, perhaps you should be paying more attention the history.
So, for giving people a false image of baseball history and insulting the intelligence of devoted baseball fans, I hereby declare that having names on the back of retro uniforms is one of the Great Baseball Lies.
