One fan’s mission to share his love of bright polyester

Sep 2

You spelled ‘awesome’ wrong

Spencer Hodes likes colorful uniforms. The brighter the better. He shares his love of polyester is shared with the online world through his aptly named social media accounts Vintage Jerseys and Hats, where he features vintage photos of baseball players of the 1970s (and their uniforms).

Previous to this project, Hodes had some experience with uniform design himself. When his sons were in Little League, he used to run the League and design the various hats and jerseys, knowing that kids are more likely to want to play baseball when the uniforms look cool. Once his sons grew older and Hodes retired from Little League, he found himself with a ton of extra time (“One thing about Little League that not everybody understands - being the president of Little League is a full-time job”). With his extra time, Hodes repurposed an old twitter account and began to post photos of things he found interesting (namely, vintage jerseys and hats). Within a few months, the COVID lockdown began, and a lot more people were spending a lot more time online. Those people began to connect with Hodes’ social media account. “It sort of blew up from there.”

“I like to say I’m a collector of memories,” Hodes says. “You think back to when you’re three years old and you don’t have real memories, you just have sort of blur, just pops of memories. For me it’s Astroturf and powder blue jerseys.”

That love of powder blue has been lifelong. “You can put it with any color. Powder blue and red. Awesome. Powder blue and green. Awesome. Powder blue and orange? It’s awesome.” Though his tastes do change over time, he always leans towards the more colorful and bright (he likes blue, not navy) and designs that aren’t “perfect,” like when the fonts don’t match. He does have a couple favorite uniforms, including the one the 1978 Padres wore, which is what he calls a “unicorn,” as it was a uniform they only used for one year. On hats, he prefers letter logos (he adores the Expos logo).

All these uniforms can be found on Hodes’ website in a searchable database he created of every single MLB uniform that was worn in the 70s. “If you get a book, and the book is in 1978 and they’re talking about a team, you think I want a picture of this in my head. You go out, and there isn’t always that ability [to find it]. So I said, ‘Okay, I’m gonna give everybody that ability.”

based ball Baseball Cap

$27.00

Through his research into baseball uniform design, Hodes has learned some interesting tidbits. “We all think of the White Sox as just black and white uniforms with stripes, but traditionally, White Sox weren’t black and white until the 90s. Before that, they changed their uniforms like crazy. They had the faux collars for a few years. They wore shorts for like two games.”

Many of the more unique uniforms and hats have found their way into Hodes’ large collection of 200-300 jerseys and a little over 2,000 hats of all sorts and styles and colors (During our conversation, he was wearing a Jacksonville Expos hat with a pink underbill from the Arizona-based Hat Club).

That broad collecting mindset of the weird and wonderful (and surprising color combinations) ties into how Hodes approaches his project. Hodes wants to make space for people with all different types of tastes, even if others might think his are garish. “I have this thing called ‘You spelled awesome wrong’” he shares, “I’m here to bring out the positive stuff. I’m not here to talk about what jerseys are ugly or what jersey sucked or what players or whatever. So any time I post something and somebody responds with something to the effect of ‘Those were horrible,’ my response is always, “You spelled awesome wrong.”

Check out Spencer Hodes’ work on his website and on Twitter.

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