<P> In 1916, on the New York Giants' road uniforms, purple lines gave their uniforms a tartan - like effect, and another kind of road uniform was a solid dark blue or black material with white around this time . The Kansas City Athletics' home and road uniforms were changed by Charles O. Finley in 1963, to the colors of gold and green . Some teams used light blue for their road uniforms from the 1970s to the early 1990s . Early striped patterns developed into long stripes along the length of the uniforms, called pinstriping . This was first worn on some major league baseball team's uniforms in 1907, and the pinstripes were then widened in 1912, so that the crowd could see them more clearly . </P> <P> The Brooklyn Bridegrooms used checked uniforms in 1889, and brought them back in 1907 (as the Superbas) and 1916--1917 (as the Robins). Satin uniforms were developed by several teams including the Brooklyn Dodgers for night games, as the sheen of the fabric was more reflective and thus easier to see . Pinstripes were commonly worn on the uniforms of the New York Yankees . Legend had it that the stripes were adopted to make Babe Ruth look slimmer, but since the Yankees had already been wearing pinstripes a few years before Ruth played for them in 1920, the legend was found to be a myth . The Yankees' pinstripes on their home uniforms soon became a team symbol . </P> <P> In 1916, the Cleveland Indians became the first team to add numbers on their uniforms, positioned on the left sleeve of the home uniforms only . (Okkonen, p. 36, p. 120) In 1929, numbers were first added on the backs of uniforms by the New York Yankees and the Cleveland Indians . By 1932, all major league baseball teams had numbers on their players' uniforms . The Brooklyn Dodgers, in 1952, became the first baseball team to add numbers to the fronts of their uniforms . In 1960, the Chicago White Sox were the first team to place players' names on the back of their jerseys, doing so on their road jerseys; within a few years, this practice became almost universal in MLB, though to this day the Yankees only wear names on their uniforms for Players Weekend, a yearly event where alternate uniforms with nicknames are used . </P> <P> In most parts of the world, numbers are no more than two digits long; however, Japanese players who are on their team's developmental roster have three - digit numbers . Major league teams typically assign the highest numbers (#50 and above) in spring training to the players who are not expected to make the regular - season roster; hence the lower numbers are considered more prestigious, although there are many veterans who wear high numbers anyway . Two Hall of Famers who wore high numbers are Don Drysdale, who wore #53 for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers, and Carlton Fisk, who wore #72 for the Chicago White Sox (reverse of the #27 he wore with the Boston Red Sox; Fisk also was the American League Rookie of the Year in 1972). </P>

First baseball team to put names on jerseys