Mud, grass, pine tar and sometimes blood: baseball uniforms get filthy during the regular season, often sending the crew tasked with washing them into extra innings.
“Defeat is not an option,” says Kee Stewart, clubhouse manager for the Richmond Flying Squirrels, the Double-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants. “Our job is not only to do the job well, but to be efficient about it.”
Stewart has been working in baseball clubhouses for about seven years. He’s now got a (laundry) bag of tricks to keep the Squirrels looking bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and ready to play ball.
It starts as soon as each game ends. As the players hit the showers, the clubhouse crew sorts their uniforms into two categories: lightly dirty and stained.
The lightly dirty pants and jerseys are immediately put in two industrial washing machines and washed in hot water, while the other uniforms are pretreated accordingly.
For grass stains, Stewart uses ample amounts of Shout spray. Those will come out pretty easily in the wash.
Rust-colored smudges of clay and dirt get a specialty product called Klayco.
“The first time I ever applied it, it scared me,” says Stewart. That’s because the product has a black tint when it’s first sprayed on. This is especially alarming to see on the team’s white uniforms. But after a few minutes, as the chemicals work on the stains, that black begins to turn yellow. “When these come out of the washer, it’s gone,” he says.
The one stain Stewart can’t stand to see: pine tar. A baseball classic, players use it to keep the handles on their bats sticky and easy to grip.
“A nightmare,” Stewart calls it. “It starts to look like a bad rash.”
Gray and blotchy, pine tar will harden if overlooked or ignored, and then it becomes a real battle.
But Stewart has a weapon of choice: Goof Off.
“This is funny because it looks like WD-40 in a can,” he says. It even has an extender nozzle. “Here’s the thing people sometimes don’t get: when I’m applying this to anything with pine tar, I do both sides because the pine tar will sometimes leak through the pant.”
The clubhouse crew wait 15 to 45 minutes before throwing the pre-treated uniforms into the wash.
And when the uniforms come out, none of the jerseys or pants will go through the dryer: the heat can set stains. Instead, the uniforms are spun nearly dry, inspected again, then hung up in each player’s locker to fully dry.
Any uniform that’s less than pristine is returned to the laundry room for another round of pretreating. Even slight discoloration warrants extra attention, like a less-than-bright corner of the R in “Richmond” on the front of the jerseys. A magic eraser will do the trick on that one.
Like most baseball teams, the Flying Squirrels wear a variety of uniforms: red jerseys with black pants, gray uniforms, and the occasional commemorative jersey, like the ones covered with the face of a baby hippo, auctioned off as a fundraiser for the Metro Richmond Zoo.
Stewart says the hardest uniforms to keep spotless are the team’s home whites. When the Squirrels play in the rain, it’s a mud-tastrophe in the clubhouse.
“No doubt, you can’t do anything about white,” he says. If a stain stubbornly holds on to jersey or pant, Stewart will add more chemicals and soak overnight before a trip to the sink and the power washer.
“The power washer is very violent on the pants and jerseys. So, we make that our very last option if we can, ” he says.
Most nights, it takes around 3 hours for the clubhouse crew to finish all the team’s laundry, including towels, socks, underwear, and for them to clean the baseball cleats.
It can take a lot longer for those muddy games.
But rain or shine, Stewart and his crew are looking forward to things getting a little easier next year. The Flying Squirrels will move into a new stadium, equipped with a new laundry room. More washers and dryers, and hopefully. some much shorter late nights.
This story was produced by Fernando Narro Roman
Copyright 2025 NPR
