COVER UP THOSE LEGS, PLEASE
By Dick Meister
I suppose it's nice that spring is here. Flowers, sunshine and all
that, they're great. But I think winter was much better.
For with the exception of an occasional addled jogger who didn't mind his
legs turning blue, there were no men to be seen on our streets in short
pants during the cold, gray season just past.
My problem is that seeing lots of people in short pants causes me to
remember things I'd very much rather not remember. Six decades later, I
still itch -- all over -- at the remembrance of the last pair of short pants
forced on me by my parents. Heavy, gray and very scratchy tweed they were,
with a very scratchy matching jacket.
It is with genuine pain that I recall sitting in church in that itchy
little suit, a truly pitiful figure trying desperately to heed the
admonitions to "quit squirming... quit squirming!" issued sotto voce but
with frightful severity by my elders.
The short pants we wore in the Boy Scouts along with our nifty Smokey
Bear campaign hats were even worse. Tramp, tramp we'd go through the woods,
and out I'd come -- every single time -- with a brilliant crimson rash
covering my bare legs. Scratching, always scratching -- and always returning
for yet another hike, and yet another dose of poison oak. For far too much
of my youth, my legs were covered with that crusty white goop known as
calamine lotion.
And remember how frightening those Frankenstein movies were the first
time you saw them, back when you were young enough to really understand
them? I do, every time I see a grown man in short pants. I haven't
forgotten all those hyperactive peasants in lederhosen chasing the monster
all over the Austrian countryside, and him turning on them to casually tear
off a bare peasant leg or arm or two before galloping off to further mayhem.
Neither have I managed to forget what seemed at the time to be the greatest
humiliation of my entire life. As a matter of fact, I think it still stands
as the greatest humiliation of my entire life.
What could be worse, after all, than having to play baseball in short pants?
I mean real baseball against real baseball teams wearing real baseball
knickers and in front of real baseball fans. Imagine that! And me an
18-year-old certain he was headed for the major leagues.
It happened in the summer of 1951. The team with the short pants was the
Talmage Sluggers, considered to be one of the best of Northern California's
many semi-professional teams, one the major league scouts watched closely.
Despite their previously impeccable conduct, the Sluggers literally went
Hollywood. The Hollywood Stars, desperate for a way to increase attendance
at their Pacific Coast League games, had broken baseball's decades-old dress
code the previous summer by exchanging baggy flannel knickers for short
flannel pants.
Hollywood got the attention it was after. People flocked to Coast League
stadiums to gape at the knobby-kneed Stars, and, if it worked for the
Hollywood Stars, it might just work for the Talmage Sluggers. Besides, it
was hot in Talmage -- the short pants would help. Thus the Sluggers ordered
a batch of the peculiar pants from the Stars' supplier.
It worked. At home or away, lots of people turned out to watch us play in
what the local newspapers invariably pointed out as our "Hollywood
uniforms."
The underdressed Sluggers won most of the games, too. But, oh, the painful
scrapes suffered from sliding into bases bare legged. And, oh, the whistles
and jeers and wisecracks from the grandstands and the opposing teams'
dugouts. I'm not claiming it had any effect on my playing. Not at all. Some
of you might wonder, though, why it is I never made it to the major leagues.
I have a confession, however. I once forgot the lessons of my youth. My only
excuse is that it was during a mind-boggling heat wave. I had this perfectly
good pair of jeans with holes in the knees, so I grabbed up the scissors and
chopped off the jeans just above the holes, providing myself what I must
admit was a pair of very cool and comfortable short pants.
It didn't stop there, either. When whomever it is that decides such things
decided that men who wished to be thought highly of in polite society should
no longer wear bell-bottom trousers, out came the scissors again. My no
longer stylish bell-bottoms quickly became stylish cut-offs -- denim
cut-offs, white duck cut-offs, corduroy cut-offs. I had more pairs of short
pants than a wealthy British schoolboy.
But then the fashion dictators issued new orders. Clothing manufacturers
soon realized there was no profit in allowing men to make their own short
pants. So it was decreed that men of fashion should no longer wear cut-offs,
but now must wear store-bought short pants -- jogging shorts, tennis shorts,
hiking shorts, bicycling shorts, walking-the-streets shorts, wear-anywhere
shorts.
That jolted me back to sanity. Imagine actually paying for a pair of short
pants. There still are a few of us who haven't done that since we were kids.
Copyright © Dick Meister