The Baseball Jacket Is a Winner Every Time – Daily Beast

Why? One reason might be that menswear draws its currency from three major sources: athletics, institutes of higher education, and the military. Baseball hits two of those, a solid double ain’t bad. The first baseball jackets, or what we know now as the baseball jackets but are also called varsity jackets or letterman jackets, were borne on the backs of Harvard’s baseball team back in 1865. Originally sweaters, through the years they became more substantial, gradually assuming the genotypic characteristics we now associate with the modern racket: contrasting leather sleeves, ribbed cuffs, button closures along the front and, of course, a letter or logo.