I heard a radio commercial say that the current Yankee Stadium is the "birthplace of pinstripes." Look, you can throw out the fact that pinstripes existed in fashion before they appeared on baseball uniforms. No problem there, I know what they meant. I'll even let you pretend that Yankee Stadium now is the same one that was built in 1923. And I'll throw in a bonus: I won't even include any uniforms from before the "modern era" (1901). That being written, here's a list of baseball teams who wore pinstripes before, or starting in the same year as, the New York Yankees:

Braves
Cubs
Indians
A's
Browns
Dodgers
Giants
Phillies
White Sox
Red Sox
Senators
Pirates
Tigers

There were only 16 teams back then. Eight of them beat the Yanks to 'stripes, and five of them started wearing them the same season. The Reds then got themselves pinstriped up while the Yanks discarded them for two years. So every team except for the Cardinals had worn pinstripes before the Yankees made theirs permanent in 1915.

So the Yankee uniform itself isn't even the birthplace of pinstripes. As for the stadium, the Cardinals finally adopted pinstripes in 1918, meaning that by the time Yankee Stadium was built in 1923, every single team in baseball had already worn pinstripes, the Yankees being the tied-with-5-others-for-9th team to do so.

Yankee Stadium birthing pinstripes is about as believable as Babe Ruth actually building the place with his hands.

Jesus, I need to change the name of this blog!


Postscript: As far as I can tell, the first pitch thrown in the modern era by or to a player in pinstripes was on April 12th, 1907, at South End Grounds in Boston. Cy Young of the Boston Braves (supposedly called the Doves in 1907) was the pitcher. There seems to be conflicting info as to whether it was the Braves or Cubs who first wore the 'stripes. I read where an MLB article quoted Marc Okkonen's book saying it was the Cubs. But on the Dressed to the Nines site (which was huge in the research I did for this post), which uses Okkonen's info, it specifically says it was the Braves. The Cubs on the other hand didn't break out the pinstripes until the 1907 World Series. We think.