Words and Illustration by B.E. Sabin | September 13, 2024
Satin was originally made of silk in China and was first brought to Europe in the 12th Century. Italy strongly liked the shiny fabric and was the first Western country to produce it. Over the next 200 years, satin spread throughout Europe. It became a favorite of royals, who enjoyed being seen in the finest of threads as well as sitting on them, choosing to make clothing out of satin, and also upholstering their furniture with it.
Brooklyn Dodgers in White Satin and Powder Blue Satin and Dark Blue Satin
Fast forward another 600 years give or take a few. It’s 1944. The location is Ebbets Field, 55 Sullivan Place, Brooklyn, New York. Six years prior in 1938, Brooklyn Dodgers general manager, Larry MacPhail, brought night baseball to Flatbush, and now after years of tinkering, he has come up with a brilliant idea: put the Brooklyn Dodgers in satin. The Dodgers are going to wear satin uniforms so they are more visible to fans, and to each other, during night games.
The lighting systems of the 1930s and 1940s weren’t the sun-like behemoths that we have today. Their luminous intensity was weak in comparison to modern stadium lights and consequently, fans and players had a hard time seeing one another. Enter the satin uniform.
While the Dodgers weren’t the first team to give satin uniforms a try, they are surely the most well known. From 1944 through the 1948 season the Dodgers had three different satin uniforms for night games. In 1944, they had a white satin home uniform and a powder blue satin road uniform. Then in 1945, they dropped the powder blue road uniform and replaced it with a dark blue satin uniform and kept the white satin home uniform. Following the ‘45 season they dropped the satin road uniforms altogether and kept the white satin home uniforms for the ‘46, ‘47, and ‘48 seasons. Following the ‘48 season the satin trend subsided and the Dodgers became a little less shiny.
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