I have been washing baseball pants for several years! I have three boys and the oldest being 17 and they all play year round baseball. That means many hours spent trying to get white baseball pants white! This year I said I was going to find a better way to get those pants clean.

I was sitting at a game (shocker, I know!) and asked one of the moms, "why is your son's pants so white?" like I just got my teeth whitened white? and she said "Fels-naptha" and I said "come again?"
She said it's a bar of soap that you can get at Walmart for .97. I said "are you kidding?" She said "no"!

The very next day I went to Walmart and bought my soap! For.97 I will try anything. – Here is what it looks like:
soap

I came home and tried it out. I fell in love because it was so easy and it smells so good!

Here is what the pants look like after they take them off and throw them in the laundry room. I am sharing both white and grey pants as I have to wash both. At any given time I have baseball pants "soaking" It feels like the clutter rule – one in one out!

grey before
white before

I washed them without any stain treatment so you would understand why I can't just wash them. Washing them doesn't even touch the Carolina red clay! This is what they look like after washing with no stain removal.

grey after wash
white after wash

Next I use the soap. This is what they look like with the soap on them – I let them "sit" for a few hours and then throw them in the wash!

grey soaking
white soaking

This is the finished product! NICE!

grey after
white after

The soap is great for getting the stains out without having to scrub.

Now, when my boys come home covered head to toe in red clay you have to get out the big guns, and for that I recommend using Iron Out. I purchased mine at Walmart (found in the plumbing aisle) This is not for the faint of heart. The fumes will burn all your nose hair! But hey, you will have white baseball pants!

pants before iron out
What I do is have them take their uniform off and I wash it just to get the first layer off otherwise what I have found when soaking pants while the clay is still on there is that you end up with a "muck" color. After I wash them once I then let them soak in Iron Out. The directions say soak for 5 minutes but I usually do a couple of hours depending on how bad the "muck" is.

Iron Out is what gets the pants back to "white". If you have found a better solution or one that is less work I would love for you to share!

pants after iron out