Unfettered: 1979 Chicago White Sox Home (Now in Blue)

D-DAY UPDATE: As promised, blue away version now available as well!

Many years ago, when EA Sports still made baseball games, I went to visit my best chum for a legendary Mets@Boston, Mets@Yankees, Pirates@Mets baseball trip over a long July 4 weekend. The key to this was me being able to work from his apartment in SoHo on Friday. That Friday, I awoke, climbed out of bed, and proceeded to have the most productive day of my career.

The key: not once, from 8:30 a.m. till 5:30 p.m., did I ever put on pants.

When my buddy came home I related how, clad only in a t-shirt, boxer briefs and fluffy bunny feet,* I had managed to complete a yeoman's share of tasks. And together we envisioned a Seinfeld Episode:

Unfettered.

Our episode takes place while George is working for the Yankees. Elayne is dating a prolific author who puts out a 1,000-page novel twice a year. His secret, which he divulges to the group: he always writes "unfettered." Jerry tries it to quickly write new jokes when he realizes he will be playing two nights in a row to the same audience.

At the Diner, the group discusses which areas are "pants free zones," and which areas require one, even in private, to always wear pants.

Kramer of course picks up on this too and suddenly becomes very productive, revisiting and accomplishing many of his cockamamie schemes from previous episodes. This also means he is constantly coming into Jerry's apartment "unfettered," to get foods.

This is a problem for Jerry, who is dating a pastor's daughter who is very very prudish and freaks out at the sight of people not wearing pants (catching Jerry is strike 1, after which he assures her his apt is not a "Pants Free Zone").

Meanwhile, George has been working like a madman, as the Yankees are pulling of a gazillion trades at the trade deadline and he must do all sorts of scouting reports. He can't keep up, and every time he manages to go home, i.e. Jerry's place, he is called back into work.

The author, too, is falling behind, since he is spending so much time with Elayne (his publisher is demanding the next book). Hoping to catch up, he drops trou in Jerry's apartment and gets to work there, which is the last straw for Jerry's girlfriend when she comes in and sees it (and thus decides Jerry's apt is a pants-free zone).

Finally, we go back to George at the Yankees office. It's 1 a.m. and he still has more than 7 hours left of work. He looks around the empty office, drops trou, and gets to work. He is discovered the next morning, passed out at his desk with his pants down.

At the end of the episode, we see Steinbrenner (from the back of course), reviewing George's massive report, and as the camera zooms out we see clearly the source of all the trade activity: Steinbrenner has been working "unfettered."**

This was our idea for an episode. If you've followed the clues above you will already know that Seinfeld was no longer airing.

I bring it up now because I later realized that we were hardly the first people to realize that working "unfettered" increases productivity:

Bill Veeck (rhymes with "neck"), genius. Untucked t-shirt, knees and leg hair freed to breathe -- inspirational!

Unfortunately, increased productivity does not allow one to do the impossible. Alas, no 1974 White Sox unis. But I got the next best thing: 1979 unis:

The files are uniform_chw_cl1.iff (white on white, replaces the Classic home), uniform_chw_cl2.iff (blue on blue, replaces Classic away), and uniform_chw_alt_1.iff (blue on white, replaces alternate).

To use them, BACK UP YOUR FILES, and then place the .iff files in this zip in your folder.

If more than 20 people download this, I'll make the blue aways.

And remember: even working unfettered, it is not okay for the White Sox to win. Think of the kittens.

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* Cold floors

** His boxers had little Yankee logos.