Nike Will Fix the Cheap MLB Uniforms They Made, Says Players Union
They're ugly, they're flimsy, they're sweaty and they don't fit. The problem is finally being addressed.
Hi friends-
A couple of housekeeping items before we move on:
By popular demand, we ‘re changing our Friday chats from Dodger-specific to an around-the-league baseball-palooza. Starting at 4 PM PT each Friday, the chat will be open to talk about whatever games/players, etc., that you want to talk about. We’ll still talk Dodgers, but we’ll also chat about all the other cool stuff going on around the league. We’re doing this because when we chat around one game and that game is a blowout, things get snoozy for all of us. ALSO, we want to include more teams, follow potential no-hitters together, and other exciting close and fun/funny games. So, I hope to see you in the chat, talking 30 teams at once, starting this Friday!
I still have a few more copies of my book that I can personalize, sign and priority mail to you for $25. Just respond to this email and let me know if you would like to buy one (or more).
We’ll meet to talk about Jane Leavy’s fabulous book on Mickey Mantle next Monday, May 6, from 5:30 PM PT to 6:30 PM PT. This Zoom will be open to all paid subscribers, and I’ll tape it and upload it for anyone who can’t attend.
Apologies for the cruddy quality of the photo of Riley Greene I picked to lead off this newsletter. Getty Images did not capture the blessed/cursed moment when Greene slid into home and his uniform pants tore completely down the side, so I had to rely on a screengrab from the video. Only the leggings he wore under his pants saved him from showing his bare butt to the world. Here’s another pic of the aftermath:
According to Cody Stavenhagen of The Athletic, after Greene’s pants split at the seams, his mother called him and said, “I’ve washed thousands of your pants, and I’ve never seen your pants rip that way.”
Indeed.
In the year of our Lord 2024, MLB provided the best baseball players in the world with uniforms made out of parchment paper and a dream. Players revolted from the minute they arrived to spring training and noticed how ugly they were and how cheap they felt. The tops didn’t match the bottoms. The lettering of players’ names on the backs of the jerseys was shrunk to the point where fans needed to squint to tell who was at-bat. The sweat-wicking “performance” material had the opposite effect on gray road jerseys (unless Patrick Ewing-playoff chic was the inspiration).
Players could no longer get their pants tailored by Nike, which they also freaked out about. When I talked to Dodger utility player Miguel Rojas on Opening Day, he told me that his short pants (to the knee) were fine, but that his long pants (to the ankle) were so ill-fitting that he was worried he might trip and fall on his face. Aware of his place on the star-player pecking order (while also being good-humored about the whole mess), Rojas said he was hopeful his pants would be fixed by the All-Star break, and that he didn’t want to make it seem like he was complaining because he gets to play baseball for a living. (But, yikes!)
More than one player told me that they weren’t even bothering with this year’s pants because the zipper and belt loops were so low-quality, and because they also did not match the color or texture of the complimenting tops. These players essentially quiet quit Nike’s 2024 uniforms by wearing last year’s pants and hoping no one would notice. (I’m not naming them here, because I’m no snitch.)
Of course, the real story wasn’t so much that MLB’s new uniforms are hot garbage. It was that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred tried to gaslight us, yet again (!), into not believing our eyes. “I think after people wear them for a little bit, they’re going to be really popular,” Manfred said on Feb. 15.
The reason Manfred was trying to pretend the new uniforms were great, actually, is not because he believed what was coming out of his mouth. Rather, MLB has a lot of money riding on fans wanting to buy replicas of uniforms, so the league admitting they were ugly and embarrassing would hurt the bottom line big time.
Manfred’s take on the situation was insulting to fans then, and it looks even sillier now. On Sunday, the MLB Players Association released a statement saying that Nike is aware it messed up the uniforms bigly and will fix the myriad aesthetic and functional problems by the start of the 2025 season at the latest. "We cautioned Nike against various changes when they previewed them in 2022, particularly regarding pants," the union memo read. "MLB had been, and has been, aware of our concerns as well. Unfortunately, until recently Nike's position has essentially boiled down to—'nothing to see here, Players will need to adjust.'"
Jeff Passan at ESPN broke the story:
Nike's partnership with MLB began in 2019, when it took over as the league's official uniform supplier as part of a 10-year, $1 billion deal for MLB. Fanatics has partnerships with the league and the union, both of which have invested in the company and own small stakes.
The prominent modifications include a return to larger lettering on the back of jerseys, remedying mismatched gray tops and bottoms and addressing the new Nike jerseys' propensity to collect sweat, according to the memo distributed to players by the MLB Players Association on Sunday.
The changes, which will happen at the latest by the beginning of the 2025 season, will also include fixes to the pants, widely panned this spring for being see-through.
The union informed players of the coming changes in a letter that placed the blame on Nike, and the debut of its Vapor Premier uniform, which was advertised for its superior performance but remains disliked by players.
"This has been entirely a Nike issue," the memo to players read. "At its core, what has happened here is that Nike was innovating something that didn't need to be innovated."
What’s interesting here is that the MLBPA completely absolved Fanatics of any responsibility for the subpar uniforms. To be clear, Nike is responsible for the design of the uniforms, while Fanatics then takes those specs and manufactures them, using the old Majestic factory they bought back in 2017 in preparation for their licensing agreement with MLB that began in 2020. In praising Fanatics, the union wrote that the company "recognizes the vital importance of soliciting Player feedback, obtaining Player buy-in and not being afraid to have difficult conversations about jerseys or trading cards. Our hope is that, moving forward, Nike will take a similar approach."
Fanatics is an atrocious company known for gouging fans with low-quality, high-cost products.
So why isn’t the MLBPA blaming them for the uniform debacle, too? Well, as The Athletic’s Evan Drellich notes, the MLBPA received $44 million in licensing revenue from Fanatics in 2023. The union may not want to bite the hand that feeds. Or, it may truly believe that Nike is the problem here, and that Fanatics simply took bad marching orders from the Oregon-based sports apparel giant.
The problem goes beyond just how the uniforms look and feel, however. The Mets haven’t even been able to wear their black or blue jerseys yet this season, because they have not yet received the pants that go with them. "There’s a serious problem when a $13-billion industry is having a tough time getting pants from a worldwide industry that’s supposed to be at the forefront of apparel and whatnot," the Mets' Brandon Nimmo told Newsday’s Tim Healey over the weekend. "We can’t wear our blacks, we can’t wear our blues because we don’t have our pants, and I hear that it’s a problem with other teams as well."
Indeed, the Mariners, Twins, Rangers and Brewers are among the teams that have had to scramble to address uniforms that never arrived. The Cardinals will not receive their powder-blue uniforms until June.
It’s a shame that sports leagues feel the need to keep trying to fix things that aren’t broken. I don’t remember anyone complaining about the look and feel of uniforms over the last few years, except for some of the godawful City Connect duds. Absolutely no one wants baseball jerseys to feel like cycling jerseys. The heft and thread count is the point. As Tigers reliever Andrew Chafin told The Athletic, MLB uniforms are supposed to feel “like you’re putting on a freaking crown and a big-ass fluffy cape.”
Somebody please send Nike the memo.
In the end, you can always count on MLB officials to screw up.
“They're ugly, they're flimsy, they're sweaty and they don't fit.”
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln is said to have enjoyed the play.