If You've Got It, Hide It

It’s no secret. I have very strong opinions when it comes to grown men wearing baseball pants (See Add That to Your Rule Book). What it boils down to is this. Gentlemen, regardless of how handsome, well preserved, and strappingly well built you are, you must remember, men of a certain age simply do not belong in baseball pants. End of discussion…or maybe not.

The smattering of youth baseball coaches who persist, season after season, in wearing full player uniforms is not the only thing that gets my ire up. It's not my only pet peeve. It’s not the only thing that has the power to besmirch an otherwise perfectly wonderful day of baseball. Prepare yourself because I’m about to foray into dangerous territory. Here goes. 

What’s with all the Annie Savoy wannbees prancing around youth baseball parks? Don’t act all innocent and pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. Scantily clad baseball moms poured into what looks like their daughters’ American Eagle or Abercrombie togs is…well…it’s criminal.    

Ladies, I urge you. PLEASE. Use a touch of decorum when you dress for the ballpark. Leave the skimpy soffes and halter-tops, anklets and toe-rings for the gaggles of teenaged female baseball fanatics meandering around outside the dugouts. Ensembles like that on a grown woman are enough to make milk curdle.

I know what you’re thinking. She’s being judgmental. Incendiary I’ll give you, but not judgmental. Not a chance because trust me. It’s a fact. No one wants to see it… your exposed stretch marks, cottage cheese thighs, migrating breasts, faded tramp stamps or flabby arms glistening in the sun. And here’s a news flash for you. NO AMOUNT OF TANNING IS GOING TO CAMOUFLAGE THE AFOREMENTIONED PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES. For the love of Pete, take a look in the mirror before stepping out in public.

Let me remind you. You are not giddy minor league groupies, bouncing coquettishly from one park to the next, chasing after your favorite major league prospects. This is not Bull Durham and your fashion antics are not going to change the outcome of anybody’s collective season statistics. 

You are mature baseball moms. The operative words here being “mature” and “moms.” Moms as in mothers…as in M-O-T-H-E-R-S. Good gracious, you are in plain view of your sons. One would think that fact alone would be enough to keep you from leaving the house dressed like Elly May Clampett.

What in the Sam Hill are you thinking? Don’t give me that whiney It’s-hot-outside-and-I-don’t-care-how-I-look-as-long-as-I’m-cool. I’ve been a baseball mom for nearly two decades and I’ve spent plenty of days sweating in bleachers. I’ve even dared to cross the boundary that separates the land of Fashion Dos from the land of Fashion Don’ts once or twice. Let me tell you something. Any lapses in discernment I've suffered at the hand of attempting to beat the heat have always been accompanied by the good sense to look before I leap. All it takes is one glance in the mirror and I’m waving the white flag, retreating to my closet where I surrender my “Gidget Loves Moondoggie” trappings for an outfit, less revealing and more befitting of a baseball mom.

Sure, I long for the days when If you’ve got it, flaunt it, was the modus operandi, but that was then. Ladies, this is now, and regardless of how old, young, or hot (literally and figuratively) you are, you must remember. No one wants to see it… your stretch marks, cottage cheese thighs, migrating breasts, faded tramp stamps and flabby arms glistening in the sun. For the love of Pete, take a look in the mirror before stepping out in public and if you’ve got it, hide it. End of discussion.