Good evening. This is Dead Legends. We’re the kind of guys that never get tired of watching the Sandlot.

This scene gets me every time.

Let’s dive in.

Today’s story is about another zany marketing idea from the mind of Bill Veeck.

We’ve previously covered some of the crazy shit Veeck used to do back in the day.

At different times, he was the owner of the St. Louis Browns, The White Sox, and the Cleveland Indians.

Bill had some of the best promotional ideas of all time, and also a few of the worst.

Here’s some of his highlights/lowlights:

• Disco Demolition Night

• Eddie Gaedel’s One-Day Career

• Signing Larry Doby

And then there were the infamous “shorts” unis of '76.

During Spring Training that year, Veeck announced the White Sox would be wearing these at some point in the season:

This newsletter certainly isn’t about fashion, but I’ll be the first one to say these are some of the most hideous uniforms to ever grace a diamond.

A few of the players had great quotes reacting to the announcement.

Bart Johnson: “They don’t have to get a pair for me. I’ll just use Jack Brohamer’s regular pants and they’ll look like shorts.”

Lamar Johnson: “I got the nicest thighs you ever saw. I can’t wait.”

Love that confidence, king.

Obviously, sliding into bases on rough, abrasive turf is like rubbing your legs with sandpaper, but even still, the team was 8-for-8 in stolen base attempts while wearing the shorts.

They won two of three games that they played while wearing these unis.

Which was actually a bit of a bright spot, since they lost 97 games that year.

In 2015, Chicago revived the collared jersey, but decided to skip the shorts this time - probably for the best.

OFFICIAL LIKE A REFEREE WHISTLE

All this talk about shorts makes me wanna grab a new pair.

Luckily, Homage is having a 20% discount on everything tonight - no code needed.

They’ve got official MLB & NBA sweat shorts available, and let me tell you -these mf’s are comfortable as hell.

If you’re more into joggers, they’ve got those too.

STRANGE NAMES

If you're just joining us, we play this game every day where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.

Why?

Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.

If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.

Today's winner is:

Yellow Horse, had a lot of talent on the mound even though his stats are far from mind blowing.

He won a World Series with the KC Monarchs in 1924, and dedicated most of his life to helping grow baseball on the west coast.

In 1949, he became a scout for the Chicago Cubs.

THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE

If you like this story, check out some of our past favorites:

• The Long Road: From prison to the big leagues

• The Killer: Ty Cobb’s mom was a murderer

• The Rap Song: New York Mets make horrible music

That's it for today. Tomorrow we're back at it like a bad habit. See ya!

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