Looking forward...

[azgreg]

Is baseball managers wearing a uniform a rule of tradition?

Yes. Once you hit the high school level or so you'll see coaches dressed all out in uniform including pants. It's a tradition thing

A stupid one.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Don't worry, we're locked up through 2025 at the 3rd lowest money amount in the Pac 12.

Not that we need any more reasons to get rid of Robbins and Heeke, but this is a good one.

The two of them, what are we holding on to?

The 20+ mil lost in the Sumlin debacle?
The Ashford crony/degree mill?
The racist comments towards Native American students?
Their involvement in the NCAA NOA?
Their mishandling of the NCAA and firing Miller?

Where are the positives with these two?

Don’t forget paying for a search firm (multiple times) to tell them not to hire his buddy for the med school and doing it anyway, much like the Sumlin debacle.

I mean, it's harder to list the positives than it is to keep coming up with negatives.

[ekat]

Don't worry, we're locked up through 2025 at the 3rd lowest money amount in the Pac 12.

Not that we need any more reasons to get rid of Robbins and Heeke, but this is a good one.

The two of them, what are we holding on to?

The 20+ mil lost in the Sumlin debacle?
The Ashford crony/degree mill?
The racist comments towards Native American students?
Their involvement in the NCAA NOA?
Their mishandling of the NCAA and firing Miller?

Where are the positives with these two?

Don’t forget paying for a search firm (multiple times) to tell them not to hire his buddy for the med school and doing it anyway, much like the Sumlin debacle.

I mean, it's harder to list the positives than it is to keep coming up with negatives.

I did give him marginal credit for handling the spread of COVID on campus, but then I moved on, as I realized everyone else was doing the work while he was taking the credit.

We know Heeke couldn’t even find a tie in the school colors today, he’s that useless. I really can’t think of one positive for Robbins.

[wyo-cat]

Is baseball managers wearing a uniform a rule of tradition?

Yes. Once you hit the high school level or so you'll see coaches dressed all out in uniform including pants. It's a tradition thing

Only people in uniform can be on the field.

[azgreg]

Is baseball managers wearing a uniform a rule of tradition?

Yes. Once you hit the high school level or so you'll see coaches dressed all out in uniform including pants. It's a tradition thing

Only people in uniform can be on the field.

Doesn't make it any less stupid.

[EastCoastCat]

Is baseball managers wearing a uniform a rule of tradition?

Yes. Once you hit the high school level or so you'll see coaches dressed all out in uniform including pants. It's a tradition thing

Only people in uniform can be on the field.

Not true. The rule says “no person shall be allowed on the playing field during play except players and coaches in uniform, managers, photographers, officers of the law in uniform or other watchman authorized by the home club.” That implies the manger doesn’t need to be in uniform. The last one to do it I think was Connie Mack.

Btw, the origin of managers wearing uniforms came from the early years of baseball when the manager was also a player.

[ByJoveByJingle]

Is baseball managers wearing a uniform a rule of tradition?

Thanks for making me look this up. Short answer: yes, but no.

According to John Thorn, the official historian of Major League Baseball since 2011, it goes back to the earliest days of the game. Back then, the person known as the manager was the business manager: the guy who kept the books in order and the road trips on schedule. Meanwhile, the guy we call the manager today, the one who arranges the roster and decides when to pull a pitcher, was known as the captain. In addition to managing the team on the field, he was usually also on the team as a player. For many years, the “manager” wore a player’s uniform simply because he was a player. There were also a few captains who didn’t play for the team and stuck to making decisions in the dugout, and they usually wore suits.

With the passing of time, it became less common for the captain to play, and on most teams they took on strictly managerial roles. Instead of suits proliferating throughout America’s dugouts, though, non-playing captains largely hung on to the tradition of wearing a player's uniform. By the early to mid 20th century, wearing the uniform was the norm for managers, with a few notable exceptions. The Philadelphia Athletics’s Connie Mack and the Brooklyn Dodgers’s Burt Shotton continued to wear suits and ties to games long after it fell out of favor (though Shotton sometimes liked to layer a team jacket on top of his street clothes). Once those two retired, it’s been uniforms as far as the eye can see.

The adherence to the uniform among managers in the second half of the 20th century leads some people to think that MLB mandates it, but a look through the official major league rules [PDF] doesn’t turn up much on a manager’s dress. Rule 3.03(a) (1) says that “All players on a team shall wear uniforms identical in color, trim and style, and all players’ uniforms shall include minimal six-inch numbers on their backs" and under the rulebook's Definition of Terms, a coach is described as a "team member in uniform appointed by the manager to perform such duties as the manager may designate, such as but not limited to acting as base coach."

While the rulebook gives a rundown of the manager’s role and some rules that apply to them, it doesn’t specify that they’re uniformed. Further down, Rule 4.07 (under "Security" says that "No person shall be allowed on the playing field during a game except players and coaches in uniform, managers, news photographers authorized by the home team, umpires, officers of the law in uniform and watchmen or other employees of the home Club." Again, nothing about the managers being uniformed.

All that said, the definition of the bench or dugout ia “the seating facilities reserved for players, substitutes, and other team members in uniform when they are not actively engaged on the playing field," and makes no exceptions for managers or anyone else. While the managers’ duds are never addressed anywhere else, this definition does seem to necessitate, in a roundabout way, that managers wear a uniform—at least if they want to have access to the dugout. And, really, where else would they sit?

[Chicat]

A great trivia question is to name the last player/manager but I think this thread has been derailed quite enough.

[Postmaster]

Pete Rose with Philadelphia