In dumbfounding, breathtaking fashion, Major League Baseball continues to make the wrong decision at every turn.
Starting on Monday, the league’s bid to suppress foreign substance usage became a farcical sideshow, with pitchers stripping their belts off and essentially challenging Rob Manfred to figure something out or risk on-screen jockstraps and underwear ruining the precious sanctity of the game he doesn’t even seem to like.
Now, with the reveal of the 2021 All-Star Game jerseys, Major League Baseball has its second horrendous decision of the week.
The jerseys are a real head scratcher. Their designs, which place each team’s logo above their three letter scoreboard abbreviation, don’t do a whole lot of anything. There doesn’t seem to be an immediate signifier of Colorado, the host Rockies’ traditional uniforms and lettering, or even a baseball uniform. They simply look like a shirt that has too much going on. Apart from the weird logo situation, there’s also patches on both sleeves, right above a floral pattern that seems like it was sent to the wrong city. Combine that with the fact that the jerseys’ buttons end right below the neck rather than buttoning all the way down, and Major League Baseball has created what looks to be a polo shirt for the person at your office who knows nothing about baseball but still wants to fit in.
One of the things that Major League Baseball always has going for it, no matter which scandal or controversy has taken center stage, is the All-Star Game. Of the four major men’s sports, baseball’s All-Star Game is unquestionably the best. The game resembles the actual sport more so than it does in football, basketball or hockey’s exhibition, where defense becomes merely a suggestion and highlights sprout from the absurd novelty rather than the immense talent. It is hard to fake baseball. Pitchers aren’t going to give the batters a cookie, and the batters aren’t going down without a fight, which means the All-Star Game is often exactly what it sounds like, a high-level game played between the game’s best.
Importantly, it also allows fans of each team to see a guy out there on the grandest stage, wearing their team’s uniform. With these new atrocities — that will, for some moronic reason, be worn during the actual game — part of the Midsummer Classic’s unique charm has been killed. Forget for a second how bad and indecipherable the jerseys are from an aesthetic standpoint. From an emotional standpoint, fans want to see their favorite Yankee or Met wearing a Yankee or Met jersey, not some poorly designed batting practice shirt that makes all the players look the same.
Imagining a young fan, perhaps attending their first All-Star Game, peering down from the 300 level and seeing Jacob deGrom in the same, blasé white No. 48 jersey that his teammates are all wearing is not quite the same as the No. 48 Mets jersey that he’s become synonymous with. Players could still wear the special All-Star Game jerseys during the Home Run Derby and other All-Star events throughout the week as they always have. This puts the merchandise in front of cameras and into the public consciousness, fueling the sales that are so nakedly being prioritized above all else here. Making the players wear them during the game, though, is purposefully removing a huge thing that fans of all ages have latched on to. A Yankee jersey in center field, flanked by an Astro in left and a Ray in right will now be a blur of homogenous, visually upsetting corporate mundanity.
All of this brings us back to the overarching question of Manfred’s tenure as commissioner. Does he even like baseball? More importantly, does he understand the elements of the game that make people who actually do like baseball like it? This unexpected and ugly change to the All-Star Game wardrobe smacks not only of change for the sake of change (and money), but also to the glaring disconnect between Manfred and the fans.
You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who likes the look of these jerseys. You’d also be hard pressed to find anyone who likes the idea of an All-Star Game without the league’s jerseys (and hats, which have been lazily replaced by black, star-adorned ones) adding color to the canvas.
Instead of the Yankees and Mets iconic NY hats, the Oakland A’s green and gold, or the home team Rockies’ purple dotting the field, fans will be subject to the latest misstep. Fittingly, a boring and out of touch one from Manfred that will take all of baseball’s best, most sparkling players and make them all look the same.
