In the mid-60s — and this is embarrassing to relate here — I was a kid running off to grade 1 or 2 wearing a t-shirt with a construction paper cutout of Detroit’s winged wheel glued to the front. My poor mother provided the artwork and I provided the model glue.
This lasted for about a year, and in my grade school mind burned an unshakeable belief that everyone who saw me wearing these crude “jerseys” would somehow believe that I actually played for the Red Wings, which was my dream from about the age of 2.
You see, I’d seen and touched (and sniffed and hugged) one NHL game-worn jersey (a very kind relative played in the show) but in my small country township in eastern Ontario not a soul owned one, not even a replica. Absolutely nobody.
But as I grew older and some of my own games moved indoors, I began to notice that many teenage girls would show up to cheer on their boyfriends from the local midget and juvenile teams. This would have been near the end of the 60s, probably around ‘68. These girls wore their boyfriends’ jereseys, either the previous season’s version or the dark “Away” one from the current year. The young Does seemed very proud to parade around the rink in their Bucks’ team colours.
Flash forward a few years and there I was, a midget hockey player with a high school sweetheart, a lovely girl who knew virtually nothing about hockey. She came to my first home game, sat with the other players’ girlfriends (most of whom were friends from high school), cheered, and became instantly hooked on the game.
She also became very aware of social standing. The next day at school she didn’t hesitate to ask, “when do I get MY jersey?” As she explained to me much later, a girl who showed up to the rink without the jersey on wasn’t taken seriously by the other ladies, was seen as just “A” girlfriend instead of “THE” girlfriend. Think of it as team jersey = promise ring. I gave her the previous season’s model, which thrilled her to bits because it had a name bar across the back shoulder panel.
Though I never experienced this personally, several of my teammates relayed that asking for the jersey back when the relationship went south was absolute Hell and certain to bring on the waterworks.
Anyway, my own recollection of exactly when fans began wearing team jerseys to the games goes back to the late 60s, when I first saw the ladies in the local rink sporting them like badges of honour.