Why you won't see team uniforms at MLB All-Star Game
Aaron Judge of the Yankees takes batting practice prior to the 92nd MLB All-Star Game at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday in Los Angeles. Credit: Getty Images/Kevork Djansezian
LOS ANGELES -- As Major League Baseball struggles to maintain the All-Star Game’s shaky foothold as one of their most popular jewel events, it doesn’t help that one of the things that helped define the term “Midsummer Classic” has become as extinct as pitchers hitting.
No longer do players wear their own uniforms, for the second straight year, as MLB has ditched the traditional practice for the specifically-designed Nike standards for everyone. So the pageantry that once made the All-Star Game a celebration of all the teams has been distilled down to the same color scheme -- one style for each league.
Now fans can’t tell who’s playing just by looking at the field. Or appreciate when an outfield is mostly full of Yankees, as it was Tuesday with Aaron Judge in right and Giancarlo Stanton in left. The reason is obvious -- Nike pays MLB a considerable sum to have leeway on uniform designs for special marketing opportunities, i.e., to sell more jerseys.
But if baseball’s tradition is worth something, as commissioner Rob Manfred insists is the case, then not everything needs to be sold off to the highest bidder. And when Manfred was asked Tuesday about dumping the individual uniforms for these event-driven models, his explanation didn’t do much to satisfy the sport’s fans who truly miss that element of the All-Star Game.
“It’s really interesting,” Manfred said at Tuesday’s meeting with the Baseball Writers Association of America. “I think one of the most important aspects of the deal we made with Nike on uniforms was a recognition that in terms of marketing the game, it’s really important to try and think about issues on a clean slate. Not just to change things just for the sake of changing them, but to think about them on a clean slate.”
As an example, Manfred cited the City Connect uniforms, specially-designed alternate outfits that have been rolled out for 14 teams so far -- seven last year and seven more this season. The success rate, depending on personal taste, has greatly varied with the Marlins, Rockies and Nationals among the best while the Cubs, Dodgers and Giants were more meh.
“There was a lot of unease, trepidation certainly among the more traditional people in the game,” Manfred said. “City Connect has been one of the great marketing successes in the game in recent years. And I think that it’s important to experiment with things like that in order to give the game a little different look.
“I never thought that a baseball team wearing different jerseys in a game was a particularly appealing look for us. I understand that people can have different views on that topic. But it’s part of a larger program designed to market the game in a non-traditional way.”
Along those similar lines, MLB will introduce corporate advertising patches on team uniforms next season, like the NBA has done since 2016. While the Nike swoosh logo already is prominently displayed, this will be an additional branding (visualize the current crypto patch on the umpires). While seeing that branded onto Yankee pinstripes is going to be tough to swallow for longtime fans, Manfred acknowledged the money is too lucrative to refuse.
“I think that jersey patches, advertisements on jerseys, are a reality of life in professional sports,” Manfred said. “That’s a revenue source that is significant enough that it’s really impossible for the sport to ignore over the long haul. I think that’s the truth.”
Speaking of revenues, one area creating some red ink for MLB is the lagging attendance figures, which are down roughly 6.5% from the prepandemic numbers of 2019 at the same point of the season. With the ever-evolving COVID-19 variants, getting fans back in ballparks will continue to be challenging.
But there are other forces driving this trend, like the cost of going to a game, and in a macro sense, the increasing competition for the entertainment dollar. When Manfred was asked how soon he’d like to see these critical stats rebound, he didn’t disguise his concern.
“Yesterday is the answer to that,” Manfred replied. “The pandemic was a setback for us from an attendance perspective. I look at 2022 has kind of a glass half-full. We’re 95% of where we were prepandemic, but we have work to do. I mean, 95% of where we were in 2019 is not our goal. Our goal is to be higher than we were in 2019 and we need to work hard on things like pricing, promotion, to make sure we get as many people as possible into the ballpark -- always recognizing that we’re a family product.”
Manfred also is speeding toward another deadline regarding the international draft, a complicated and contentious issue left over from the new collective agreement, which was formalized in March. MLB and the Players Association have until July 25 to come to terms on the format, and if that happens, it would then eliminate the qualifying offer attached to free agents -- something the union has been long been trying to do.
Both sides have exchanged recent proposals, but given the chilly labor relations -- and the glacial pace of getting anything done -- finally implementing an international draft over the next week seems like a longshot.
“We’ll have to see whether, to what extent, there is any common ground to be found,” said Players Association executive director Tony Clark. “The system needs to be much better than what otherwise has been contemplated to this point.”
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
