Commentary: Nice clothes don’t necessarily make the times good

It was 1956.

“Can you believe the way people used to dress to go to baseball games?” I asked my wife as I showed her the photo.

“That’s something,” she agreed. “I wonder if times were better when people dressed more formally?”

That was not the first thought that occurred to me when I saw the photo, of course. The first thought that occurred to me was, “What kind of pitch did he hit?”

But it’s a good, if unanswerable, question. Especially for those of us who came of age in the clothing generation gap, that brief period in which what was acceptable wear at baseball games was somewhere between suits and ties and shorts and T-shirts.

Were times better when most men wore suits and most women wore dresses and the only adults who wore baseball caps at baseball games were baseball players?

Or are they better when a president makes public appearances coatless, tieless and with his shirt sleeves rolled up? When celebrities appear on television talk shows in jeans and T-shirts? When restaurants find it necessary to post signs saying “No shirt, no shoes, no service?”

My kids, who probably think “haberdasher” was a world made up by Dr. Seuss, are at ease in a world clothed by Gaps, Banana Republics and Old Navy. And, if they occasionally trample on the fine line between casual and slovenly, well hey, at least they’re comfortable.

My parents’ generation most likely would wish for a return to the time in which people dressed for work, dressed for dinner and would never think of going to church unless they were wearing their “Sunday best.” A time in which admiring glances were given to people who dressed “to the nines.” Whatever the nines were.

But before we get too nostalgic for those times, it may be good to remember one more thing:

It also was a time in which, after he made that last hit in front of that well-dressed crowd, Jackie Robinson might still have had trouble getting a room in a hotel or a table at the restaurant of his choice.

No matter how nicely he may have been dressed.

Contact D.L. Stewart at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com