How to Clean Baseball Pants (Without Losing Your Mind)

A baseball mom shares the tip that saved her hours of scrubbing.

Author

Travel Baseball Guy Staff
March 25, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Whose idea was it to make baseball pants WHITE?? 

It’s a valid question since these pants take a beating—dirt, grass, sweat, you name it. And if you’ve ever stood over a sink, scrubbing red clay stains with a toothbrush, you’re not alone. Laurie, a long-time baseball mom from Jupiter, FL, knows the struggle all too well.

“At first I used Fels Naptha,” she said. “Another mom had told me about it. It’s like a bar of soap. I would wet the spots on the pants, rub it with the bar, and then use a toothbrush to try and scrub the red clay stains or grass stains out.”

The routine worked—sort of—but it wasn’t pretty. “It was labor intensive, brutal for my hands, and made a mess. My laundry room had reddish brown spots all over the sink and walls,” Laurie said. “Sometimes it would take an hour or more for one pair of pants.”

Then one day at a game, Laurie overheard another mom in the stands talking about a stain remover she swore by. Iron OUT Rust Stain Remover Powder—a multi-purpose cleaner typically used for removing rust stains in bathrooms, kitchens, appliances, and laundry.

Laurie was a little skeptical but figured it was worth a shot—after all, this mom had four boys playing baseball; surely she knew her stuff.

“I ordered it from Amazon, poured some in a bucket, added water, and soaked the pants for 30 minutes. When I came back, the water was brownish red,” she said. “Then I just threw them in the wash with detergent on a hot cycle—and when they came out, they were white. Better than the Fels Naptha ever did.”

Laurie was a believer. “No scrubbing. No messed-up manicures. No mess… It was life-changing,” she said. “I just wish I had found this out when my kid was 10 instead of 17.”

Do you have your own go-to method or miracle product? Drop it in the comments and help out the next baseball parent trying to save a pair of white pants from disaster.