During the last few years, Major League Baseball has released new City Connect uniforms (Nike) for most franchises. We know, based on player complaints, that the baseball jerseys made by Nike are crap, like wearing see-through diapers. Their top design, named Sensual Silhouette, is so thin, there is nothing actually blocking the viewer from seeing the body of the baseball player. Another design, named Scratching Post, allows the viewer to see if the batter is scratching his left or right ball. Shall we play in army-green mesh underwear with capes? So how do the City Connect Nike designs hold up anyway? Without further ado, I present to you the MLB City Connect Uniform Rankings.
Seattle Mariners. A+. One of the good ones. Great way to dress up your trident. Awesome color combination with bold blue, bold yellow, and a neutral black that allows the blue and yellow to stand out. The yellow belt is genius; never has a MLB belt looked better. Look how it pops. I need one for my railroad worker coveralls. Yellow trim element on the sleeve and collar of the blue jersey is outstanding. Lower case "seattle" with outline is visually appealing and font seems similar to (or related to) the trident from the helmet. Excellent blending of notions. The helmet itself is a work of art, simple and effective colors and design. Simpler is better. Well done. Ken Griffey, Jr. is smiling somewhere. Simple beautiful swing. Simple color scheme. Effective. Home run. Never has the occupation of mariner been so attractive. Did you realize there are probably hundreds of millions of people who have died in the oceans over the last several thousand years, through wars, fishing accidents, drownings, seawrecks, and other tragedies. The Seattle baseball franchise honors these deceased mariners with the blue and yellow colors.
Cincinnati Reds. B-. Remember in the 1970's when this was the best team in baseball? Joe Morgan, best second baseman of all time. Pete Rose, best hitter of all time. The Reds are once again one of the more exciting teams in all of baseball currently and the flashy red/black jersey color seems to match the excitement of the team. There's a sense of speed here. I don't like the "Cincy" lettering in the shadow font. It washes together. Why do that? Maybe there needed to be more of a white shadow behind the lettering so you could read it easier. Probably yes, needed more white, a third color, for contrast with dark red and black. I do like the red stripe on the pants, I do like the red C on the sleeve and hat. Ken Griffey, if you see him smiling, is smiling for the Seattle jersey and not the Cincinnati one. Oh Ken, oh Ken, what if you could have stayed healthy! You would have been greater than Ruth, Mantle, Williams, and Mays!!!!!!!!!!!
Boston RedSox. B. The design, on its own is OK. It's simple. You can see it's not too unlike the Brewers jersey or the Seattle jersey except change white for black. But I thought the point was to do something unique but that also could be associated with the traditional city or jersey. This looks like a Seattle or Brewers jersey, or possibly St. Louis Blues. I don't know why this would be viewed as representing Boston. So it's a good design but doesn't take you anywhere into the city's tradition or history. I assume the color scheme is tied to some elementary school in Boston, but this tie is lost on most people.
St. Louis Cardinals. C-. I liked this at first, but then it made me dizzy. The two birds balanced on the bat are of course outstanding and represent the see-saw of life between joy and pain. However, when you stand back and look at the outfit, it's basically a bright red hat with a bright red jersey with their already-existing bird feature and old jersey script changed to "The Lou." There really needs to be some other color element here. The hat is too busy. Everything is too busy. The red jersey washes out the red birds. Seems like they missed an opportunity to do something special here. I would have dropped all the script from the hat and the jersey and had this be all about the bird. A single cardinal, bright bold red, on a jersey, with a white background. Even put a nice tree and green leaves on the jersey. Then a red pant and a white hat. In other words, green as a contrast color. Now, that is cooking with gas!
Cleveland Guardians. B-. These are OK, I would rate similar to the Reds jersey as being simple and somewhat effective. The best feature is the moto stripe down the sleeve, which adds element of movement to an otherwise clunky jersey. The greyish CLE doesn't do anything for me -- it looks like something from a motocross event for kids (see Reds, Tigers, etc., the idea of NASCAR was definitely one of the Nike themes for all these jerseys). There is something simple about the blue color, which is nice. There's nothing new with the hat here. The team moniker Guardians is horrible of course, which doesn't help anything. What exactly are we guarding? A safe full of money? Sick children? Hospital gowns? About one-third of all MLB teams have a blue/white or red/blue/white color scheme (Guardians, BoSox, Rangers, Braves, Twins, etc.) and I can't take it anymore. There are colors beyond those on the American flag! Yellow is a color. Maroon is a color. Purple is a color. Orange is a color. Also, you can have stripes on a jersey! You can have vertical stripes, horizontal stripes, color blocks!
Colorado Rockies. B+. This is one of the worst and most hopeless franchises in all of pro sports. If you were born today and had to choose your big 4 American sports teams, with the goal of choosing teams who would win a championship or two during your lifetime, you would avoid for sure the Rockies, the Utah Jazz, the Memphis Grizzlies, the Royals, the Pirates, the Carolina Panthers, the Ottawa Senators, the Dallas Cowboys, and the Buffalo Sabers. All of these teams have owners with no brains. You don't necessarily need a brain to win a title (See Dilfer, Trent) but it never hurts to have a brain. None of these teams will win a title in the next 100 years. Write it down.
The Colorado jersey designer did a great job incorporating the forest green color into this design. Green is not overly used in MLB and when it is, it's more of a bright green, so this is a nice, unique look, appropriate for the Rocky Mountains and the fir tree. Green pants with white belt makes it pop. I don't fully understand the hat design but a splash of purple is a good third color. So if you are a Rockies fan, you have a nice stadium experience, a nice City Connect jersey, and that's about it. It's nice also in these politically correct days to have a stadium named after a beer. "Welcome to Schlitz stadium!" For me, had the pants been brown, that would have been even better, because then the whole uniform looks like a mountain. Brown is a color.
Miami Marlins. A+++. After Nike released this jersey, it should have stopped there, and called the City Connect program a success, before it crapped the bedpan with so many mediocre designs. Did you know that many bedpans are only the size of a tiny foldable camping cup? Why is this? The Miami jersey is why you create an alternate jersey, to do something fun and different. When I saw this color scheme, I immediately bought the hat. This is classic Miami color, beach color, Cuba color. There are only three U.S. cities that can pull off these colors, OK four. San Diego, New Orleans, Miami, and Honolulu. The light blue and bright red are so satisfying together. They got the light blue outline element just right on the white chest lettering. The hat is so nice. The wide white pinstripe adds a touch of class, almost like a zoot suit or a beach suit. These are so fun, they make you forget that the Miami Marlins are a horrible franchise. In an ideal world, MLB would consolidate Miami and Tampa Bay into one team in the NL East (the team would be named the Southeastern Marlins, to accommodate Tampa, Miami, and Puerto Rico), and make them play half their games in Puerto Rico and the other half in Miami (some of which could be in Tampa Bay). But the jerseys are delicious like Kool-Aid with crack ice cubes.
Atlanta Braves. A-. I have lots of thoughts here, because the Braves are my favorite team. I started cheering for them in 1995, which was a good time to start as a Braves fan. Maddux, Glavine, Chipper, Smoltz. Acuna. Freeman. Hank. Murphy. Along with Yankees, Dodgers, Cardinals, they are becoming one of "those" teams with their history, although they need to do a lot more of course. This jersey with white, red, and a lighter shade of royal blue with the diagonal meeting of colors is a simple and effective design that of course reminds us of a vintage Braves jersey from Aaron's time. One of the problems with being a Braves fan is the whole tomahawk thing is embarrassing. I would buy an Acuna jersey if it didn't have a tomahawk on it. The tomahawk chop at the game is embarrassing. The alternate logo used on this jersey -- the diamond or arrow -- doesn't do anything for me. They need to do something new to replace the tomahawk, but something better than the arrow/diamond. When they finally do that, their merch sales will explode. Their color scheme generally of the gray/white/red/navy is too much like Twins, BoSox, Rangers, Guardians. I wouldn't mind them using the City Connect jersey as their main jersey just to shake things up a bit for a few years since their main jerseys are pretty boring. But ultimately they do need a new logo to rally around. Also, why "The A"? What does that do for me? Does anyone in Atlanta call their city, "The A"? "Where are you from?" "The A." Does anyone say that? I don't know.
Hey Nike, do us a favor and make something without your dumb logo on it. Be brave, See if you can make something and NOT put the logo on it. I dare you. I don't think you dare to do it. I DARE you not to wipe your dumb logo all over the face of the earth. I dare you.
Kansas City Royals. C. It looks like a T-Ball jersey. What if it looks like the KC is bleeding in a sort of computer-y sort of way? Is the KC designed from masking tape? What if we do light blue with dark blue? It's not as horrible as the Philadelphia jersey but it doesn't take you anywhere and it's just kind of a naive mess. I feel sorry for KC fans that this is their jersey. Hopefully when they get a new stadium their ownership group will spend more money and become more competitive again... Nothing was better than George Brett and Saberhagen and the Royals at their best in the 80's.
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. B-. Obviously an all white look, but what is the reference? Is this a Hollister ad? It's not horrible but it's not great either. Maybe they should have gone full-blown old-timer baseball with long socks and stirrups and baggy hats and three-quarter length sleeves and the rest. That would have been better. I don't understand this team and why they suck so bad in every domain. The team name is the worst. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Why not put in the whole address: The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim 2000 East Gene Autry Way. The New York Mets of Queens. I don't get it. Go back, please pretty please to being the California Angels. Go back to those sweet uniforms and the hat with the prominent angel halo, try to get Nolan Ryan to play for you. Do something, please, please. You have wasted the entire career of the greatest statistical player to ever play. I am prepared to say Trout is better than Ruth, but not quite ready to say that Trout is better than Mays or Mantle or Williams or Aaron. Trout needs to win some playoff games. I blame his dumb owner. They have no pitching over there. No identity.
Los Angeles Dodgers. A-. I like this one a lot. A huge part of the city speaks Spanish, nice to use Los Dodgers here. The red numbering is a nice contrast with the blue and white. Some of their older classic colors would at times incorporate a drop of red. Simple, Not too much. That's how it's done. The rich get richer.
Houston Astros. B. I appreciate their basic uniforms generally. Blue and orange. One of the only unique color schemes in MLB anymore other than Oakland A's and maybe Pittsburgh Pirates. I like the nod to the space program, especially the orbital movement on the hat, but they sort of lost me with all the extra orange trim on the front and the sleeves. It seems like there had to be a way to incorporate the space idea without getting carried away quite so much. Maybe the blue color is too dark and washes out the orange a bit. Cheaters never prosper unless you're the Astros and you're the best team in baseball of the last decade.
San Diego Padres. A-. I can't rate it as high as Miami but I like what they've done. Neutral white-gray with the beautiful pink and light green. Tampa could have done something in a lighter white or grey like this to highlight their funky color scheme -- would have been better. The dual colors on the San Diego lettering is unique and simple and effective. It makes you want to pour yourself a big nice cold drink of juice. Very well done indeed.
Arizona Diamondbacks. D. I'm sorry. The Diamondbacks design people need to start over at the beginning of the franchise. Everything they do is tinged with poop. The gross oil grey jerseys. The dumb snake motif. One year we are turquoise, now we are dark grey and orange. Now we are white and yellow. On the face of it, a yellow jersey on a white pant isn't a horrible idea. It's nice to use a different shade of yellow. I guess I don't love the font and the hat is stupid. I'm not going to like anything they do until they get rid of the dumb snake theme. No one wants to root for a snake as a sports team. I don't want a snake on my hat. I don't want to be called the snakes or the serpents. Are there a lot of high school or college programs named "the snakes"? I didn't think so. No one likes snakes as a sports team.
San Francisco Giants. D+. The + is for putting the bridge on the hat. The D is for everything else. Weird washed-out light grey with weird orange color. These colors go together like barf and diarrhea. The bridge is cool but too busy and focuses you on the side of the hat instead of the front. Yeah, G stands for Giants, I get it, by why do that at all?. Boo. I'm sad because their traditional jerseys are among the best in baseball and this was a huge strike.
Milwaukee Brewers. B+. This makes sense. Like Boston and Seattle, they are going for a simple yellow and blue look, with the white neutral. Their beer tradition allows them a cool nickname "Brew Crew" whereas most other teams have to force their nickname a bit much. This is fun, clever, simple. Not quite as classy as Seattle or Dodgers, but nice. Looks casual like a softball league where you play for beers. Single, one beer. Double, two beers. Home run, beer on your head.
Chicago Cubs. C. The C on the hat is so stupid. It looks like something AI designed. The motif is noisy dark blue everywhere with the letters slapped on. It doesn't take you anywhere except to the toilet. They have so much to work with in their history, this was a huge miss. It looks like a 10th grade graphic design project. Let's put a C on the helmet, but then a little red dot in the C. That seems like something a software company in Provo would do. Stupid.
Detroit Tigers. C. These are horrible. If my son asked for one of these Detroit kits for Christmas, I'd tell him Rudolph had been made into dog food. I wouldn't be surprised if these were generated by AI by inputting a NASCAR jersey and a nuclear reactor warning sign. The hat looks like a referee hat for cricket or old-timer baseball. The jersey is pure NASCAR or motocross. You have the loud/bright blue on the chest and on the sleeve -- this is a scream of desperation for this horrible baseball franchise. I don't know what they were thinking. It would be cool if these were leftover from Chernobyl survivors.
Texas Rangers. B+. I kind of like these. Less is more, people. Less is more. Navy pants with white belt and white stripe looks simple, classy. I like the white shirt with the red numbering. This is sort of an update to the boring red/white/blue color scheme that has ruined modern MLB jerseys. The blue is more of a navy instead of the other dark blue color all MLB teams have been using for ten years. I'd say this is similar to the Cleveland jerseys -- simple but effective, but I like this one more than what Cleveland did because they did a better job avoiding the stupid gray color. Note to MLB designers--more white, less grey, but we don't always need the pants to be white.
Tampa Bay Rays. D+. When my daughter was younger, I took her to this glow-in-the-dark mini golf place named something like "Scooby Doo's glow-in-the-dark Mini Golf for Kids." It was full of freaky glow-in-the-dark elephants, kangaroos, and pirates. I think the Rays stole the idea and made it into a jersey. I like the idea of doing something glow-in-the-dark with the neon green and the purple, but the grey ruins everything for me. The grey blend, stolen from the Diamondbacks regular grey jersey, is horrible, and looks like an oil rag. I would rather play with a brown paper bag over my head than wear this. If they were stealing the Scooby Doo van idea, they should have gone all in and used light blue as the main color instead of the dark grey. And then put a ghost on the jersey. That would have been cool. Now if these jerseys really are glow-in-the-dark, and the team plays with the lights off with a glow-in-the-dark ball, then I will eat my words. Had they done the jersey in a nice light blue like a 1970's van, this would have been an A to the tenth power.
New York Mets. F. These are so flippin' bad. On my LDS mission 35 years ago, everyone said flippin' or fetchin' or friggin', to avoid swearing. Funny. People even said "ship" instead of the other word that sounds sort of like "ship" but is a swear word. The Mets are always the little step-brother to the Yankees, and here the Mets have tried to steal the pinstripes and the whole city (NYC), and failed miserably, which is perfect for the little step-brother role. Imagine the New Jersey Nets doing an alternate jersey that looked like a Knicks jersey. New York already has a baseball team for the whole city; it's called the Yankees. The Mets designer here has also stolen the ugly purple from the Colorado Rockies jersey (Colorado sometimes uses pinstripes too). Whenever you are borrowing an idea from the Colorado Rockies, you know you are doomed. The grey color itself looks like a dirty oil rag. The overall appearance if of men on a chain gang who happened to have a little purple felt to spruce up their otherwise depressing outfits. I could see these being piled up and soaked in turpentine to start a fire for leftover tires.
Philadelphia Phillies. F. The worst jersey of all. Or "Wurst" as Germans might say. I would rather eat a raw German wurst than own this stupid Bryce Harper jersey. The first time I saw these nightmare jerseys, I laughed so hard I forgot to breathe. This jersey had to, had to, HAD TO, be made by AI, right? You put every font and color in the universe into the computer brain and ask it to make a baseball jersey for a large mental institution for kids, and this is what you get. You take the crappy loud NASCAR blue idea from Detroit Tigers jersey? Check. Steal blue and yellow scheme from Mariners and Brewers? Check. Steal Memphis Grizzlies color scheme? Check. Have the blue fade from light blue to dark blue for no reason? Check. Choose colors that have no connection to Philadelphia sports? Check. Make it look like the jersey is a sentient being trying to escape from a mental institution? Check. Make something that Godzilla's daughter would have drawn? Check. My favorite part is the "PHILLY" in the nutty font. That is special. I think this comes from a font Ben Franklin developed when he had gonorrhea.
Washington Nationals. D+. The + is for the idea of putting the cherry blossoms on the uniform, but you can barely see them! They should have leaned all in to the blossoms and done a pink or salmon jersey with abstract flower patterns. The flowers blend into the drab ammo gray background so you loser the flowers. The grey is a horrible color, like an oil pan, WSH does nothing for me. Why not ING or TON. WSH has no meaning. A nickname like Brew Crew works because it's fun. WSH is not fun. There's nothing "fun" about Washington D.C. It's a serious place where stupid politicians live and try to ruin everything.
Stand 100 yards away from a person wearing this jersey. What do you see? It looks like a huge gray blob, like an oily rag. Nothing stands out.
Obviously the team won the World Series a few years ago but otherwise this is a poor baseball franchise, looking more like the Royals and Pirates every day. They have no real history, with their team and colors stolen from Montreal. Soto left. Strasburg retired. The name Nationals is stupid given the range of interesting things you could tie to in Washington D.C. -- The Constitution, Arlington, Watergate, The Declaration, Jefferson, Treasury, Lincoln, MLK, Washington, The Mall, the museums, monuments, Smithsonian, Potomac, the cherry blossoms, and so on.
If I were in charge of MLB, I would force the Nationals into a 50/50 home schedule with Montreal getting the other half of the games. The team name would change to Northeast Expos name and like I said Montreal and Washington would split the home games. They would remain in the NL East. After you combine Tampa Bay and Miami into a single Southeast team and make them play half their games in Puerto Rico, the NL East would be cool because you would have two teams (Expos and Florida team) in foreign countries. Now move the Mets to the AL East and bring Toronto to the NL East, and suddenly you would have two Canadian teams in the same division. That would be cool. So Braves, Phillies, Florida (Puerto Rico), Montreal (Wash), and Toronto is your NL East. The AL East is NYY, Baltimore, BoSox, and NYM (Tampa Bay no longer exists) as a four-team division.
Pittsburgh Pirates. D. They should be happy with this D for minimal effort. This jersey doesn't do anything new. It's just PGH instead of Pittsburgh. Otherwise it looks like a T-ball jersey. Did this take more than an hour of design time? This smells of low-budget team. It looks so cheap. I thought K-Mart was out of business. Every penny Nike made on these was pure profit. They invested nothing. These were designed during a Maverik donut run.
Baltimore Orioles. B+. This one grew on me. This is basically a black-white jersey which is usually a cop-out with some orange splashed on for the name. Kind of like Detroit or Cincy, playing on race car theme. There must be a Nike NASCAR guy stuck on this MLB project. I see this Baltimore kit as maybe a uniform for an arena football team. 8-year-old boys will love this jersey. But it's simple, bold, three-color -- you can see it from 50 yards away. Maybe they could have done something to celebrate The Wire, the greatest television show in the history of this or any other world. "You have to have a code."
Chicago WhiteSox. A. These ritzy numbers, along with the Miami and Seattle jerseys and a couple of others, are the best of the best. When I see these threads, I think of Putting on the Ritz! You could wear to this to a wedding or funeral. I'm wearing this jersey now, on an airplane, and I'm the pilot! There's a lazy trend in pro sports to have every team play in black. See Utah Jazz. See Phoenix Suns. It's lazy and it's lame to use black for no particular reason. Some teams have an historical or traditional reason why the color black makes sense. The San Antonio Spurs, for example, have been in black and white forever. The Pittsburgh Steelers are great in black. There's something that just makes sense about Chicago WhiteSox in the white pinstripe on the black jersey. It looks classy, it looks Al Capone-ish. It looks 1920s-ish. It looks Windy City-Ish. No other city except New York could pull off this design scheme. The chest Southside font is beautiful. I want all my dreams printed in this font. I want to live within the spectre of this font's holy memory, forever.
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