It's Sunday night.  Americans across America are kicking back, digesting the barbecue from the last cookout of the weekend, ready to relax with a few innings of baseball before heading back to work tomorrow.

They flop down in their Barcaloungers, pop the tops on their beers, click on their TVs, and what do they see?

Two guys--Jon Miller and Joe Morgan--dressed like they're ready for their first job interview.  Or maybe they're going to meet the father of the girl they want to marry.  Or applying for a mortgage. 

The rule of formality on national television broadcasts is followed with distressing conformity in local markets.  Here in Red Sox Nation, our TV broadcasters--Jerry Remy and Don Orsillo--follow the First Holy Communion Dress Code.  Blue suit, collared shirt and tie.  Is the executive producer Sister Mary Joseph Arimathea?

The logic that dictates business dress for on-air sportscasters goes something like this (I guess):  They're at work.  They're paid good money.  They have white collar-type jobs, with no heavy lifting involved.  So they should get dressed up.

There are two flaws in this reasoning.  First, most of the American workforce outside the farming and manufacturing sectors long ago abandoned the mandatory shirt-and-tie uniform for casual dress.  Make all the Dockers jokes you want, if your shirt has a collar--any collar--and you aren't wearing jeans-cut pants, you'll probably make it past the security guard at Third Short First National Bank.  In fact, you're more likely to be stopped for questioning and a full-body cavity search at a tech company with a name like "Infotronix" if you wear a suit.

Second, these guys work at ballparks.  Like peanut vendors.  Like scorecard hawkers.  Or souvenir vendors.  None of these occupational categories puts on the dog like the maitre 'd at a prix fixe restaurant.  So why a dress code for sportscasters?

Let's face it.  Making sportscasters dress up is a remnant, a vestige, a fashion anachronism.  As Woody Allen's character Fielding Mellish said in the movie "Bananas", it's a travesty of a mockery of a sham.

 Sportscasters look uncomfortable dressed in three-piece suits on hot nights in July and August because they are uncomfortable.    When they look uncomfortable, that sense of unease is conveyed to viewers, who squirm in their chairs and switch to American Idol or PBS Pledge Drives.  Anything to avoid the sight of Jon Miller basting like an Oven Stuffer Roaster with the built-in thermometer about to pop.

So network execs, hear my cry--let my sportscaster wear a Hawaiian shirt!

Copyright 2006, Con Chapman