In the spirit of Halloween and the World Series, let’s look at the fun tradition of dressing up for road trips by MLB teams. It is a tradition not unique to any specific team but has been a common occurrence for much of the social-media era. 

With the current MLB season in full playoff swing during Halloween, teams usually dress up during the regular-season months, but that may be just because they secretly like wearing costumes.  

No matter what point of the season, dressing up for a theme creates camaraderie for a team and does no less than increase team morale. Whether it is late September or amid summer, it is nice to take the edge off a long MLB season and do something fun. 

In 2016, the Mariners joined in on the festivities with an idea brought up by manager Scott Servais. Rather than doing a boring theme, he asked his players to dress up in outfits representing who they are as people. 

It was a fantastic idea for the team to bond and share their culture and identities and the players took the opportunity in stride. 

Dae-ho Lee wore HanBok, traditional Korean attire. Servais wore a Green Bay Packers-inspired suit, and Adam Lind and Steve Johnson wore their home-state-inspired outfits. 

Many teams take the opportunity of dressing up to have a lot of fun. In 2018, coming off a 3-7 stretch and heading on the road for 10-games, the team dressed up for their trip to their next series. 

Among the team was Seattle Supersonics, WWE wrestlers, a police officer costume that Félix Hernández and more. Following the move, the Mariners went 6-4 on their road trip. Is it crazy to attribute that increase in wins to team morale? 

The Mariners may be the most fun team in baseball, but they are not the only team who has the tradition of dressing up for some road trips. 

In 2018, the same year that Seattle had one of their costume sessions, nearly half the league had at least one occasion of team-building costume parties by August.

MLB ranked their top five themes of road trips up to that point of the season and their list is lacking in the Pacific Northwest department. 

However, it did include some notable themes. The Diamondbacks dressed up in “Miami Vice”, the Pirates all wore basketball jerseys, the Brewers dressed up as their announcer Bob Uecker and the Diamondbacks made the list a second time with an “Saturday Night Live” theme. 

The top spot was given to the Chicago Cubs, who all took inspiration from teammate Pedro Strop and wore his style of outfit. 

Teams taking inspiration from a single entity or player is a common occurrence when teams decided to dress up, and often times it does not disappoint. 

Overall, when a team needs a mid-season morale boost, they often look to dressing up and just taking a step back from the stress of the season to enjoy themselves and enjoy their teammates.