Twenty years ago, after blowing the lead in a critical playoff game for the Minnesota Twins, Juan Rincón described the feeling with an all-time baseball malaprop: “Nobody wants to be in my pants right now.” These days, it seems, nobody wants to be in any pair of baseball pants. Major leaguers reported to spring training this week to find that they cannot customize their pants anymore, and that their new style of jerseys – designed by Nike, manufactured by Fanatics – is not up to big league standards.
As The Athletic’s Stephen J. Nesbitt wrote, players around the league “criticized the jerseys’ poor fit, cheap look, inconsistent quality and small lettering.” Sigh. Major League Baseball just can’t help itself, and it keeps getting worse.
In 2019, for the cringy “Players Weekend,” they staged an all-white vs. all-black uniform series that evoked “Spy vs. Spy” from the old Mad Magazine. The next year, as part of a 10-year deal with Nike worth more than $1 billion, they let Nike slap its logo on the front of every jersey. Then came “City Connect” uniforms, in case you ever wondered how your favorite player would look as a blueberry, a cloud or a license plate. The All-Star Game, always a cavalcade of colors with players wearing their regular uniforms, became a three-hour ad for generic Nike jerseys. Now this.