Chris Sale gets benched for cutting up 1976 White Sox throwbacks

Well, this has to be one of the more bizarre uniform-related stories that you’ll see anywhere. There was a bit of a stir surrounding the Chicago White Sox when they abruptly announced before tonight’s game that their starting pitcher and ace Chris Sale was benched following a pregame “non-physical” incident.

Speculation began to run rampant as to what Sale could have possibly done to earn a spot on the bench. Did he get into another incident with the White Sox’s front office? Were they keeping him healthy in the even of a trade? As it turned out, this had nothing to do with trades and everything to do with the uniforms that the team was wearing for the evening.

Apparently, Chris Sale is not a fan of the 1976 throwbacks, and after the team rejected his request to wear different uniforms, Sale took matters into his own hands.

Yes, you read all of those tweets correctly: Chris Sale hated the 1976 throwbacks so much that he took a knife and cut all of them in order to make sure that the White Sox couldn’t wear them. This was an extremely unprofessional move on Sale’s part, so you can definitely understand why the front office elected to send their ace pitcher home for the evening. It’s normal to see baseball teams hand over the choice of uniform to the starting pitcher, but sometimes there are nights like this where you’ve got to appeal to the fans, and this was one of those nights. You can’t just go around cutting up the uniforms just because you don’t like them.

As a result, the White Sox ended up wearing their Sunday alternates from the 1980s for tonight’s game. They still went ahead with the promotion of giving fans a replica 1976 jersey, though it had to have been weird for the fans at the game to get one jersey while watching their team wear a completely different jersey.

At the end of the day, there are much better ways to express your frustration about uniform choices and/or promotions. No matter how you feel about a choice of uniform, getting stabby is the wrong way to go about showing your displeasure.