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January 11, 2008
Q. Have you ever wondered why baseball team managers wear the same uniforms as players while basketball and hockey coaches wear suits and ties and football coaches don parkas and caps on the sidelines?
A. Baseball was an organized sport long before the others, with no precedent about what managers should wear, says Robert Frank in “The Economic Naturalist.” And early uniforms were baggy enough to conceal a form well past its prime; given that baseball is not an athletically demanding sport, even some players look out of shape, so an older manager seems less conspicuous in a uniform. Plus baseball managers frequently have to enter the field of play, as when making a pitching change. A man in a business suit would seem jarringly out of place. Finally in baseball's early days, a number of managers were simultaneously active players, so uniforms made perfect sense for them.
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