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The World Series, the finals of the main baseball championship (MLB), is being played in the United States between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers are leading 3 games to 1 and could close the series from the next one, because the game is played in the best of 7 and whoever reaches 4 first wins. Who is following them by depriving themselves of sleep, or who is wisely catching up on the highlights in the morning next time, you will have noticed that some players are on the pitch with two black colored stripes under their eyes, the so-called eye black.
It is a practice that has long been widespread in American sports, in particular in American football and baseball, but which has also arrived, albeit sporadically, in more European sports: the Turkish goalkeeper Rüstü Recber remained famous who used it at the 2002 World Cup The origins ofeye black and above all its usefulness are debated. Even today, experts and commentators question whether it is actually useful for improving players’ vision (we’re getting there), or whether they are used more for aesthetic and ritual reasons.
Turkish goalkeeper Rüstü Recber at the 2002 World Cup (Ben Radford/Getty Images)
The first testimonies ofeye black nel football they are from the 1940s, when the Washington Redskins (the football team now called Washington Commanders) player Andy Farkas used it. In baseball one of the first to use it he was the legendary player of the Boston Red Sox and the Yankees Babe Ruth, circa 1930s. It is said that Ruth, nicknamed the “Child” and protagonist of one of the most famous sporting “curses” of all time, in some matches drew two stripes under his eyes using a mixture of shoe polish and burnt cork.
His goal was to reduce the glare of the sun, and over time other athletes began to do so as well, mainly to emulate Ruth who was one of the best players in baseball history. Often just a cork burnt with a lighter was used to make the two black marks.
An in-depth look at New York Times published in 2006 cited some studies according to which theeye black it actually helps to absorb sunlight, or floodlights when matches are played at night. This partly reduces the glare effect and increases the ability of baseball and football players to perceive contrasts: a big advantage when you have to catch a ball, or a small ball, which often comes from very far away and very high, and which therefore during its trajectory crosses areas of very strong light.
It is no coincidence that basketball players, for example, do not use it, while lacrosse players do: lacrosse is a popular sport in North America, especially in Canada, in which a racket is used with which you have to send a ball into a goal similar to a hockey goal. In lacrosse he eye black they are often imaginative and creative (although following some rules), which perhaps ties into the origins of the sport: an ancestor game of lacrosse, the baggatawaywas in fact practiced by American Indians since the fifteenth century, and often the people who played it colored their faces for apotropaic purposes.
A drawing by the painter George Catlin representing three North American natives playing baggataway, the ancestor of lacrosse (WIkiMedia)
The effect ofeye black however, it is still debated: there is evidence that it is useful for improving the sensitivity of vision, but it is more difficult to demonstrate that it leads to a clear improvement in performance. Some argue that painting one’s cheekbones is mainly an aesthetic issue, which is used by athletes to appear more self-confident, to intimidate their opponents or simply as a ritual for good luck, as the indigenous North Americans did before playing baggataway. “I don’t know if it was a placebo effect, but it’s something that stayed with me,” he told al New York Times former New York Jets player Laveranues Coles, who to play a football game without eye black it would have been like «playing without shoulder pads, or without a helmet».
In part, the aesthetics of athletes also draws on military imagery and the soldiers’ habit of painting their faces black, dark green or brown to camouflage themselves. But there are also those who dye their cheekbones black to send a message, drawing a number, a writing, a slogan like “Black Lives Matter”.
In reality, the NFL and especially the MLB, the main football and baseball leagues, have strict rules on the messages to be displayed during games, and the players must communicate them in advance to the league. Several athletes have been sanctioned for messages with harmless and personal content, which however had not been approved: in 2015 for example Cam Heyward he was fined for writing on his cheekbones Iron Headhis dead father’s nickname, and DeAngelo Williams for the writing Find the Curewith which she wanted to raise awareness of the importance of breast cancer research after the death of her mother and aunt.
Second what was told from the sports site ESPNit is not clear who was the first to personalize the two black stripes, but it is recognized that he eye black with writings and symbols became common after the former football player Reggie Bush wrote 619 on it, the number of the postal code of his home neighborhood in San Diego, California (sometimes he wrote SE on his other cheekbone, to indicate the south-eastern area of the city from which it came).
Reggie Bush (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
Over the years, the substances that players apply under their eyes have also changed: today they mainly use a mix of beeswax, paraffin and charcoal powder, or more often products usually used in cosmetics. Some prefer to attach two stickers made specifically for the skin, which are more convenient to remove at the end of the game and more practical for attaching writings and numbers in other colors to highlight them. The spread of stickers has partly contributed to the symbolic sense ofeye blackbecause their absorbent power is lower, especially when there are colored things on them.
