Have you ever noticed how many baseball players play with one sleeve? They have one arm covered, and one arm bare, except for a glove of one type or another, or an occasional sweatband.
Whassup wid dat?
I Google searched photos of major leaguers to find examples of this practice and found several.
I can't figure out if the long sleeve is on the throwing arm, or if it's for maintaining a grip on the bat or something. Anybody ever hear why they do it?
For the most part, it looks like the sleeve is on the throwing arm, and never the glove arm.
But it is also consistently on the back arm of the batting stance.
There are guys that will use both sleeves. This may be dependent on the gameday weather, of course, and may not have anything to do with performance.
There are also a few guys that don't cover their arms at all. It's all gun show all the time.
Gattis and Myers don't even use batting gloves most of the time!
So I was seeing a pattern. Until I saw these guys....
Joey Gallo, Pablo Sandoval, and Odubel Herrera wear a sleeve on the OPPOSITE arm! Their front arm is sleeved. So I looked them up - they all bat Left (or Switch in Sandoval's case), and throw right. So it must be the throwing arm thing.
As a bonus, here are two guys that switch up their arm coverings all over the place.
Miggy in Detroit...
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| Gloves only |
 |
| Gloves and Bands |
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| Full Sleeves |
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| Gloves, Bands, and Full Sleeves |
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| Nothing. Dig the awesome throwback uni! |
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| Elbow Guard only |
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| One Sleeve |
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| Full Sleeves and Gloves |
I've never heard the game announcers discuss this phenomenon. Anyone know why they do it?
I think in some instances it's to keep their throwing arm warm. In others, it's the hand hand they dive back into first base with, so could serve as extra protection versus getting cut up.
ReplyDeleteA lot of runners have taken up compression sleeves as well - something to do with keeping their arms warm and improving blood flow, I think.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing that the reason most of these guys wear such things, is simply that they think it looks cool, or that they think it makes them standout a little more. The same goes with those stupid looking sticker magnet things that are starting to get worn more and more. The first athlete I remember wearing the sleeves, was Allen Iverson in the late 90's, so everyone can blame him for what became a really dumb trend!
ReplyDeleteP.S. thanks for the random blog plug.