A rare ‘shorts’ game highlights this weekend’s home stand

The Carolina Disco Turkeys return to Winston-Salem’s Truist Stadium this weekend for what will be their next-to-last home stand of the season for the popular new summer wood bat franchise.

But it won’t be a quiet return to the friendly confines by any means.

For Saturday’s game, the second of two games this weekend, the Disco Turkeys will be doing something highly unusual for competitive baseball-- wearing shorts for a game! They host the Greensboro Monarchs for the match-up, which will start at 5:35 p.m. Tickets may be bought in advance for $7 or $8 at the gate.

For the game, the Disco Turkeys will sport their usual sharp home white jersey with its retro font and feather logo sleeves, along with their usual navy game hat. But they will complement those gameday staples with navy shorts that rest up above the knees and long white baseball socks. The white sox are meant to make it more apparent to fans in the stands that the players are wearing shorts, team president and co-owner Greg Sullivan said.

“We gauged the players on the idea early in the season, and they were very supportive,” said Sullivan. “Plus, it’s supposed to be in the low-90s here this weekend, so it’s not a bad time to try it if you’re going to.”

The look is meant to be reminiscent of one of the most renowned sports fashion experiments in history. The team is aiming to reference a brief disco-era look worn by the 1976 Chicago White Sox. That team was the only team in MLB history to wear shorts for games, wearing them three times that season. There was a misconception by some that the experiment had failed because the White Sox went back to pants in the second game of a double header after debuting the shorts in the first game. However, they later wore them for two more games that season and players spoke positively about them and seemed to enjoy the fun, according to stories from the era.

Coincidentally, the Disco Turkeys share their home stadium with a Chicago White Sox affiliate, the Winston-Salem Dash.

“It’s going to be fun for the fans to see something different, for sure,” Sullivan said. “The players on both of these teams on Saturday are really good players. You see experiments in summer collegiate baseball sometimes, but we all thought this would be a tasteful and cool one that our guys and crowd will really get into. If we were going to do something weird, we like that there’s an MLB precedent to point to. A popular old minor league team called the Hollywood Stars also wore shorts at games regularly long before even the White Sox.”

The Disco Turkeys start their home stand on Friday with a 5:35 p.m. match-up against the High Point-Thomasville Locos.