Rangers outfielder Hunter Pence has been wearing his uniform pants above his knees for a very long time. Indeed, five years ago he was even interviewed about that. When asked why he wore his pants over his knees he said, “I don’t like it tugging on my knee when I’m running. I just got really comfortable with it and it feels good.”
It feels so good that he’s apparently gotten some teammates to adopt the look as well. Get a load of Pence, Rougned Odor and Ronald Guzmán during yesterday’s game against the Royals:
With the proviso that anyone can do what they want in this world as long as they ain’t hurtin’ anyone else, that looks really bad. I mean, it’s fine with Pence because we’re used to it and he sort of looks odd doing almost anything, so he gets a pass. But Odor and Guzmán look like your dad rolling up his jeans past his knees in order to get your fishing line unstuck from a branch about 15 yards offshore.
I also wonder if they’re not gonna get a letter from Joe Torre about it. Not necessarily just because it’s an aesthetic crime, but because it might be interpreted as a effort to try to steal some low strikes and transform them into balls by causing the umps to misjudge the strike zone. I mean, umps shouldn’t be using pant length to determine that — knees are knees no matter were you wear your trousers — but I bet a lot of them use the cuff as a reference point when the batter is wearing long socks and umps probably don’t like this much.
