FAQs
Answers to the most common questions.
Why don't you print this as a book and sell it that way?
I’d love to print it. But the end result would cost more than 99% of buyers would be willing to pay for it. I have looked at all sorts of alternatives, including printing in black and white, shrinking the pages to fit four screens on a single open leaf of a book, grossly abridging the content, printing the American League separate from the National League—and the math just doesn’t make sense; I still end up north of $100 per copy. I’m afraid I’d end up with hundreds of unsold copies getting musty in my garage. Maybe someday I’ll figure out a solution. In the meantime, some avid readers have printed and bound their own copies by bringing their CD to the local copy center. One reader told me he did it overnight on the color printer at work. Shame on him.
How is this book different from Marc Okkonen’s 1991 'Baseball Uniforms of the Twentieth Century'?
As you can see from looking at the samples provided, my guide is far more detailed, but covers only the years after 1970; highlighting year to year changes in everything from trim to typestyles to patches sewn on the sleeves. “Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century” is an unbelievably complete reference going back to 1900—but it shows only a small drawing of the front of each uniform. If you liked that book, you’ll like mine too.
Do you have a version of this book available for older flannel baseball uniforms?
Maybe someday. Flannel baseball uniforms were not something I coveted collecting, frankly because they are so darned expensive! So I never kept enough notes on them to assemble anything this complete. The definitive book on Flannels remains Marc Okkonen’s Baseball Uniforms of the Twentieth Century; an amazing feat of research. Unfortunately, this book has been out of print for years, though copies of it are sometimes available used on the Internet, both from book dealers and on eBay.
Do you plan on writing a version of this book for other sports, like NFL Football or NHL Hockey?
No. My wife would certainly divorce me. I’ll stick to baseball, thank you.
Could you show an example of every jersey from every year for every team?
Wow! Do the math: with 30 teams and approximately 40 years with each team having on average 4 different jerseys a year including BP and alternates, that’s over 4800 different jerseys to catalog. That’s quite a tall order and rather unlikely to happen. The 2009 edition has many more examples of gamers from individual years than the last edition, but I’m afraid I still don’t have photos of verifiable examples of every jersey from every year though I am getting closer.
Do you plan to expand to include caps and jackets? Socks? Pants?
No. I have decided to limit my research to jerseys for the foreseeable future.