“Home Whites” and “Road Greys” are synonymous with baseball. You can turn on a game any night and know within seconds which team is the home team and who is the visiting team.
The rule is very simple:
If you are the home team – your team is wearing white.
If you are the visiting team – your team is wearing grey.
But why is it this way?
Legend has it that in the early days of professional baseball, the visiting team had no access to laundry facilities and thus the players were not able to clean their uniforms. The darker uniforms or the “road greys” could conceal the dirt and grass stains better than the white uniforms. I can just imagine these old time legends arriving in a city and putting on these dirty, grimy uniforms and taking the field with the stains from their previous city.
Being the home team must have had a different feeling. In addition to getting the home cooking and comforts of home, the home team were able to launder their uniforms.
Often times, the reasons why we have traditions today are based upon simplistic decisions made by our ancestors. They had less, so they dealt with it in creative ways.
I hope you enjoy a chuckle when you look at uniforms today and remember why we have “home whites” and “road greys”.
Until Next time