SURPRISE, Ariz. — Former Texas Rangers catcher Austin Hedges was never afraid to show his emotions during the club's World Series run last fall.
At the team's championship parade and celebration on Nov. 3, Hedges nearly showed more than his emotions.
He was all set to wear bottomless chaps to the parade in honor of his team-rallying bit of keeping a running number of wins needed to win the championship on his buttocks.
Manager Bruce Bochy let the outside world in on Hedge's bit when video aired of Bochy's celebratory speech to the club after sweeping the Orioles in the AL Division Series.
"What's the number on Hedgie's ass," Bochy asked to raucous cheers from the winning clubhouse.
It helped Hedges become a lightning rod on social media as the team's biggest cheerleader and his morale-boosting clubhouse shenanigans.
Hedges, who signed a free-agent deal with the Cleveland Guardians this winter, wanted to cap the "surreal" season by wearing bottomless chaps to the parade, but his mother, who along with his father rode in the parade with him, shot the idea down. Oh, and there was another issue with the chaps.
"Mama Hedges was like, 'Austin no.' She gave me that look," Hedges said on The Chris Rose Rotation podcast. "People got mad at me [for not wearing it], and I'm like, 'Mom said no.' She said, 'Austin, if you ever want to get a job again, you can't go do this.'"
Also, Hedges said, the chaps weren't just missing the back.
"The problem actually is they're not just assless chaps; they're also frontless chaps," he said. "I pulled these chaps out of the bag, and I'm, like, 'what am I going to do about the front?' So I don't know what I was supposed to do. What's the protocol there?"
Hedges still has the chaps in case of an emergency.
"Just in case I need them at some point," he said. "There's going to be a time and place when someone asks, 'Hey, dude, do you have any assless chaps?' Yes, I do, actually."
More must-reads: