High socks, loose swings, and a clever play: How sandlot Cardinals edged Cubs, took series

The suggestion was meant to help Sonny Gray feel cooler in the heat if not actually be cooler, but it got him thinking about how it might just be so cool to tug up the cuffs, flash the socks, and feel like a kid again.

Teammate Miles Mikolas, a veteran of these sauna starts, told Gray that when it’s hot, exposing the socks “keeps you cooler.” Gray sounded like a skeptic.

Then he made it poetic.

“It’s just taking me back to my roots,” Gray said. “I wore my socks up when I was a kid. I wore my socks up all through high school, my socks up all through college. It’s just taking me back to my roots. That makes me feel like a baseball player, not a pitcher. I’m a baseball player now. Just making baseball plays. I want to be a baseball player.”

With the ringtail tops of his red socks showing