As you’ve probably heard by now, Red Sox radio broadcaster Will Flemming generated some controversy during Sunday’s Bosox/Yankees game by suggesting that the Sox should bean a Yankees player in retaliation for Yanks second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. stealing two uncontested bases during the 8th inning of a lopsided game. Flemming then indicated that the Sox pitcher at the time, Jovani Morán, should fight Chisholm.

Flemming’s on-air comments (for which he later apologized) echoed a lot of the chatter surrounding Mets reliever Jefry Jan’s airborne strikeout celebration, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. Lots of people, including one Uni Watch commenter, have suggested how lucky Yan is that pitchers don’t have to bat anymore, so he can’t be beaned in retaliation for his antics.1 Mets Police blogger Shannon Shark (full disclosure: a friend of mine) went further, writing, “If he does this to me, the next time I’m up I lose [the] grip on the bat and it accidentally goes flying at the mound.”

Some people refer to this type of retaliation as “the players policing themselves,” or “enforcing the unwritten rules,” or “on-field justice,” or “making sure the game is played the right way” or “making sure they respect the game.” Those phrases all sound righteous, but that righteousness, however good it may feel, really boils down to a simple point of view: “I think you’re a jerk, and therefore I feel entitled to physically assault you.” It’s the worst, most immature kind of Neanderthal behavior — much worse than the perceived slight it’s responding to.

Read more

I was checking the ESPN website on my phone a few mornings ago and saw the headline and video preview image shown above. I didn’t know who “Berry” was, but I could tell he was a base coach, not a player, because he was wearing a Cool-Flo helmet. “Hmmm,” I thought to myself, “interesting to see a coach wearing No. 0.”

Then I scrolled down to the next story, where I saw this:

Whoa — what are the odds that the top two stories on ESPN’s MLB page at any given moment would show one base coach wearing No. 0 and another one wearing No. 99? (For the record, that’s Quintin Berry of the Cubs and Willie Harris of the Reds, both of whom coach third base.)

That got me thinking about coaches’ uni numbers. Of course, many pitching coaches, bench coaches, and other MLB coaching personnel now wear windbreakers or hoodies (just like their managers), so their roster numbers are essentially moot. But base coaches still wear jerseys, so their numbers remain visible. Are there other base coaches who wear 0 or 99? Are there coaches who are assigned those numbers but we’d never know because they don’t wear jerseys?

I was curious, so I looked up the “Coaching Staff” page for every team on MLB.com. I found some interesting stuff, including the following:

Read more

But while the NFL may be able to kill off the Pro Bowl, they can never kill our memories. With that in mind, here’s a fond look back at the 10 worst — or at least most comical — designs in Pro Bowl uniform history, going from somewhat amusingly bad to full-on hilariously bad1, beginning with…

10. The Rear View (2009-10)

Too be fair, these uniforms weren’t so bad when viewed from the front. But oy, that back view. The weird contrasting fabric panels, the Pro Bowl logo patch under the uni numbers, the spikes wrapping around the players’ butt cheeks — it was all too much. If you squint, you can also see that the jerseys had a sublimated star pattern, although it’s hard to make out. But don’t worry — a bit later on we’ll be seeing some sublimated stars that are much easier to discern!

9. The Fadeaway Gradient (2001-02)

Pretty tame by Pro Bowl standards, but it was still pretty weird to see a gradient design on the gridiron, especially in 2001. The Falcons wouldn’t follow with the NFL’s first non-Pro Bowl gradient uniform until 2020.

Read more

The Bills unveiled their new alternate uniforms last month. Whatever else you may think of them, I’m genuinely puzzled by the decision to go with grey1 jerseys and pants. To me, grey just looks so, you know, grey. It’s drab, it’s blah, it’s dingy, it’s dreary. Why would you want to look like that?

I know, I know — the Bills play in Buffalo, which is a pretty drab, dreary place, at least in the popular imagination. But even if that were true (it’s not), why would you want to highlight that? It’s one thing for them to go with a whiteout uniform, because (a) Buffalo is famously snowy and (b) white is a legit football uniform color. But grey? Ugh. (For what it’s worth, Bills fans apparently agree with me.)

And that leads me to a simple question: Has there ever been a good grey football uniform? Is such a thing even possible?

It’s worth noting that lots of NFL teams over the years have worn grey pants. I’m not talking here about ostensibly silver pants that just look grey in today’s modern fabrics (like what the Raiders currently wear, for example); I’m talking about true grey pants, which have been worn at various points by the Colts, Eagles, Giants, and others. I’m not a big fan of any of those pants (in each case, I think white would be better), but they weren’t bad enough to ruin a uniform all by themselves. So the real problem here is the use of grey jerseys — which are even worse when paired with grey pants. Let’s review some recent NFL examples:

Detroit Lions (2017-2023)

Read more

I recently wrote about MLB’s relatively unknown “bannermark” logo, which debuted at the 1970 All-Star Game and appeared on the All-Star Game MVP trophy throughout the 1970s. You can see the bannermark-emblazoned trophy in the photo above, which shows Reds outfielder George Foster receiving the trophy in 1976. (Also: UPI misspelled Monte Irvin’s first name in the caption!)

But here’s something I didn’t know until reader Michael Ortman recently brought it to my attention: The bannermark was also showcased on a trading card! In fact, the entire All-Star MVP trophy had its own card in 1972.

There are so many weird things about this. For starters, Topps referred to this hardware as the “Commissioners Award” (note the missing apostrophe), but the object in the photo is engraved with “Commissioner’s Trophy” (emphasis mine).

Read more

Royals catcher Salvador Perez, who hails from Venezuela, had three shout-outs to his homeland written on his chest protector last night (see above). The messages translate to “God bless you VZ,” “We are with you,” and “I love you, Venezuela,” all of which refer to the devastating earthquake that hit that nation on June 24.

Although Perez conveyed his sentiments on his catching gear, most Venezuelan MLB players have been showing support for their countrymen by having “VZ” embroidered onto the side of their caps. The interesting thing, at least to me, is how non-uniform these uniform adornments have been. They’re all on the right side of the cap (the left side is already occupied by the New Era logo, grrrr), but aside from that there’s very little consistency to them. There are lots of different fonts and type sizes, and even the positioning of “VZ” lettering varies quite a bit from player to player, or at least from team to team.

To be clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. On the contrary, the variety of “VZ” inscription styles makes the whole effort feel a bit more homespun, less corporate. I’m just surprised — pleasantly so — that the MLB bigwigs didn’t issue precise specs for everyone to use.

As of Opening Day, there were 60 Venezuelan players on MLB rosters — the second-highest total of any non-USA country (trailing only the Dominican Republic’s 93). I couldn’t find photos of every Venezuelan player, but I did manage to piece together a pretty good assortment of shots from 15 teams. This gallery is not intended to be complete or definitive, but it at least gives some sense of the range of “VZ” treatments that have been out there on the field over the past month and a half. Take a look:

Angels

Astros

Atlanta

Brewers

Dodgers

Giants

Guardians

Mets

Padres

Phillies

Red Sox

Reds

Royals

Tigers

Yankees

One exception to putting the “VZ” on the right side of the cap came on July 4. Since all caps that day had the “USA 250” logo on the right side, Venezuelan players’ caps had the “VZ” on the left — but positioned far back from the New Era maker’s mark:

In addition, at least one Venezuelan third base coach — Rouglas Odor of the Guardians — has been wearing the “VZ” on his helmet:

If you want to contribute to the Venezuelan earthquake relief effort, you can do that via highly reputable organizations here and here.

Reminder

As I recently mentioned, this will be the last freebie post here on Uni Watch. Going forward, new content will be available only to paid subscribers.

Here’s a quick Q&A:

What about the free articles you already published?

All previous free articles, including this one, will remain free and accessible to all in the archive.

So if I don’t pay, the articles won’t be emailed to me anymore?

If you’re a free subscriber, each post will still be emailed to you and you’ll be able to read the headline and the first paragraph or two. To read the rest of the post, you’ll need to become a paid subscriber.

I already have a paid subscription to Inconspicuous Consumption. Can I get a discount if I also sign up for Uni Watch?

Unfortunately, Substack doesn’t have a bundled-purchase functionality. For what it’s worth, the $30 annual fee I’m charging for Uni Watch is the lowest subscription price Substack allows, and Inconspicuous Consumption is only a bit higher ($35), so you’re already getting a pretty good deal.

I like Uni Watch, but I don’t feel like paying for it.

That’s up to you, of course — we all make yea-or-nay purchasing decisions every day. But I can’t work for free, and I think it’s fair to charge a reasonable price for my work. If Uni Watch seems like a worthwhile purchase for you, that’s great! If not, I understand.

Okay, okay — I’ll pay up. How do I do that?

Look here.

Uni Watch, created by Paul Lukas, has been covering the world of athletics aesthetics since 1999. He also writes Inconspicuous Consumption, which is sort of like Uni Watch for everything other than sports.

Subscribe now

Note: This post includes some video clips that are essential to the story, so I strongly recommend that you read the web version, not the emailed version. Also, there’s an important programming note at the end of the post, — Paul

Unless you’ve been under a very large rock, I assume you’re at least vaguely aware of Mets rookie reliever Jefry Yan, who was called up last week from Triple-A and has achieved instant fame due to the very distinctive celebration routine that he executes after striking out a hitter. In case you haven’t yet seen it, here’s a good look, including replays from several different angles:

Yan has been doing this jump-split-slide choreography for several years now at various stops in his career, including in the minors, spring training, Japan, the Dominican Winter League, the Caribbean Series, and so on. He’s attracted some media attention before, but the coverage really exploded when he got called up to the bigs last week, made his MLB debut on Wednesday, and struck out the first batter he faced.

The response to Yan’s gymnastics has been interesting. While there’s been some gnashing of teeth by old-schoolers who think he’s disrespecting the game (or words to that effect), my general impression is that his celebration has been pretty well received. One reason for this, I’m fairly certain, is that Yan has had a long, tough road to reach the majors, including a four-year period when he was out of organized ball altogether and worked primarily as a roofer, so his story has a certain Horatio Alger factor that makes his celebration feel earned. It probably also helps that his general demeanor seems to be more jovial and than sneering. (Unfortunately, he doesn’t speak English — or at least there are no English-language interview clips of him that I’ve been able to find — so it’s hard to get a deeper sense of his manner and tone, but he does seem to smile a lot, which goes a long way.)

Yan has pitched in only two Mets games so far, and he had strikeouts in only one of them, so it’s still early days. But I wanted to discuss some of the nuances of his situation, and I knew just the person to call: Ken Davidoff. Although he’s now a journalism professor at Endicott College in Massachusetts, he spent more than 20 years as the national baseball columnist for Newsday and then The New York Post, and he’s also the co-author of a recently published book called 101 Lessons from the Dugout, which is about how developing good baseball habits can be a guide for living a successful and virtuous life, so I thought he’d be the perfect guy to address some of the issues raised by Yan’s celebration. Here’s the transcript of a Zoom call we had yesterday morning, edited for length and clarity:

Uni Watch: What was your first thought or reaction when you saw Jefry Yan’s strikeout celebration?

Ken Davidoff: I was amused. I mean, I think it’s entertaining.

UW: There have been lots of relievers over the years who’ve had signature celebrations, like Fernando Rodney with the bow and arrow, and even going back 50 years ago, you had Tug McGraw thumping his glove against his thigh as he walked off the mound, which for that era was very demonstrative. How do you feel Yan’s celebration either fits into or deviates from that tradition of relievers with a signature celebration move?

Davidoff: Oh, I think it very much fits into it. And the more you learn about his story, the more I felt like he’s earned the right to dance. It’s just such a great story — he’s obviously just so grateful to have persevered and made it to the big leagues, so let him dance.

UW: Yeah, I’ve noticed that as well, that a lot of people seem to like his backstory. And as a result — I mean, I’m projecting a bit here, but it seems like people who might otherwise find his theatrics objectionable, or at least an eye-roll kind of situation, are more inclined to forgive or even embrace what he’s doing. So you think that’s a big part of it?

Davidoff: I don’t want to speak for the public at large, but my reaction certainly was colored by that.

Share

UW: He’s pitched in only two games so far, and he didn’t have any strikeouts in one of those appearances, so he’s only done the celebration in one game. And when he came into that game, the score was 4-3 in the 6th inning. Do you think his routine would land differently if it’s a game when the Mets are losing 8-1, or even winning 8-1?

Davidoff: That’s a good question. I think there’s nuance to it, and I think it’s episode by episode. The fact that the Mets’ season is basically done also plays into it. If they were in the thick of it and he did it during a blowout game, that might color things differently. So yeah, I think it’s a very context-dependent thing.

UW: You recently co-authored a book called 101 Lessons from the Dugout. Does Yan’s celebration fit into any of those 101 lessons in either a positive or negative way?

Davidoff: You know, I looked through the book again before this call, and we don’t have a chapter that really nails this dynamic. And in retrospect, I regret that we don’t, because I think this is a real thing, that line between celebrating and showboating, between respecting your opponent and disrespecting your opponent.

The closest thing we have is Chapter 82, “The Head Trip,” which is about controlling your emotions, controlling your temper. But that’s more about staying in control when you get a bad break, so it’s not quite the same. I do wish we had covered this.

UW: You and I are a pair of middle-aged white guys. When it comes to something like this strikeout celebration, how much of this type of behavior, and the response to it, do you think is generational and/or cultural?

Davidoff: I think it’s pretty huge. One thing that stands out in my mind, Paul, is that when bat flips really started to become a thing, let’s say in the 2010-ish time frame, and CC Sabathia was on the Yankees by then, and I remember talking to him about it. He said, “Look, man, if someone takes me deep, let them celebrate because they’ve earned that right!” CC was not showboaty at all, but he was emotional — when he had a big strikeout, he would roar and he wasn’t quiet. So yeah, I do think there definitely is a significant generational societal element to this.

UW: If a player does something showboaty, we’ll often hear the broadcasters — who, again, are usually older than the players — saying, “Oh, he’ll get plunked next time.” Or if it’s a pitcher, they’ll say, “He’s going to get one of his teammates plunked if he keeps that up.” But you’ve spent a big part of your professional career talking to these athletes. Do they really care so much about this kind of stuff nowadays?

Davidoff: I think it’s case by case, and I think that’s what makes the Yan thing so interesting, because his story is so compelling. If people think someone is a jerk, they’re not going to like his celebration. But it’s often the jerkiness will precipitate the celebration — there are people who you think are good guys, so you’ve fine with it if they celebrate, and then there are jerks, so you think their celebration just enhances their jerkiness. But there are also people who don’t celebrate at all, but who are still regarded as jerks. So it’s complicated. It’s a soup.

From what I’ve read, it seems like Yan’s teammates are enjoying it, so I think that’s the key dynamic here. And I know he got booed by the fans in Cleveland, but that’s fine — they should boo him! He’s the opponent and he’s celebrating.

UW: I’ve also heard some people say their biggest problem with the celebration is that he’s going to injure himself — twist an ankle, blow out a knee, something like that.

Davidoff: Yeah, that would be bad. But I’d file that under the same heading of “If everyone on the team is good with this…”

Paul here. Good stuff from Ken! Please join me in thanking him for his insights.

As for me: I’m generally not a fan of “Look at me!” antics, but I agree with Ken that Yan’s routine is entertaining. It has zip, pizzazz, charisma, all that fun stuff, and I’m pretty sure I’d think that even if Yan wasn’t playing for my favorite team. I do think it would probably be less appropriate in a blowout game, so I’m curious to see how he handles that type of situation, and I also wonder if the whole thing will feel tired and rote once the novelty wears off. Also, both of his appearances have been on the road, so we don’t yet know how the home crowd may egg him on, or how the team will promote his routine with scoreboard animations, a signature music clip (maybe Van Halen’s “Jump”?), and so on, all of which could quickly devolve into an insufferable shtick.

But my bigger concern is a practical one: Based on Yan’s first inning (admittedly a very small sample), it appears that he launches into his jump on every two-strike pitch, as if he’s anticipating the strikeout before it happens. If the pitch doesn’t result in a strikeout, he doesn’t do the full routine with the leg-split and the slide, but the jump still leaves him ill-equipped to field his position, and that’s not good.

To see what I mean, look at this next video, which shows the entire inning of Yan’s MLB debut from last Wednesday. Skip ahead to the following time marks:

• 1:02: 1-2 count, Yan jumps, pitch is fouled off.

• 3:37: 0-2 count, Yan jumps, pitch is grounded past shortstop for a single.

• 10:13: 0-2 count, Yan jumps, pitch is grounded to shortstop for a fielder’s choice to end the inning.

Yan didn’t jump for any pitches except when there were two strikes, so it was clearly something calculated, not spontaneous. And if any of those batters had hit a comebacker, he probably wouldn’t have been able to field it. Ditto if he had to cover first base on a grounder to the right side.

But there were encouraging signs of progress two days later, when Yan made his second appearance. He didn’t strike anyone out, but he did throw two two-strike pitches, both of which were taken for balls, and didn’t jump for either of them. So maybe the two-strike jump was just adrenaline from his MLB debut. Or maybe he only jumps if the batter swings. Or maybe someone on the coaching staff said something to him. Something to keep an eye on.

I mentioned all of this to Ken, who agreed that the two-strike jump could be problematic if it continues. He also said 101 Lessons from the Dugout has a chapter that relates to this — Chapter 44, “The Ready Position”:

Maybe we should chip and get Yan a copy of Ken’s book!

As I’ve written before, most notions of playing the game “the right way” are rooted in ancient codes of behavior that are foundational in our culture, like the Ten Commandments and the Seven Deadly Sins. For example, we’ve all seen a batter stand and admire a ball he’s hit and then end up with a single when the ball hits off the wall instead of going out. Although you probably don’t think of that sequence in theological terms, the reason the batter’s behavior offends our sensibilities is essentially because he’s committed two of the deadly sins: sloth (by not hustling out of the box) and pride (by admiring his hit instead of running). The fact that he ends up with a single — instead of the double he would have had if he’d run hard from the get-go — reinforces the notion that engaging in vice has consequences. This, we intuitively understand, is a form of justice.

Certainly, nobody can accuse Jefry Yan of sloth. But if his two-strike jump leaves him unable to field his position, that seems like a case of letting pride get in the way of doing your job. Something to keep an eye on!

Meanwhile, you may have noticed that although Yan wears No. 84, he has No. 99 on his belt loop:

I initially figured, “Oh, he must have worn No. 99 at Triple-A and gotten a matching belt, and he hasn’t gotten a new one yet to match his MLB uni number.” But it isn’t quite that simple. Yan has worn lots of different numbers as a professional but, near as I can figure, his first time wearing No. 99 was this past winter, in the Dominican Winter League. He then wore 99 for the Mets in spring training but, oddly, did not wear the 99 belt (at least in any photos or footage I could find). As far as I can tell, he began wearing the 99 belt while pitching this year at Triple-A Syracuse — where his uni number was 70, not 99. And now he’s brought the belt with him to the majors. (If anyone can help flesh out this chronology, feel free to do so in the comments.)

It turns out that the 99 is part of Yan’s personal branding. He refers to his celebration dance as “La Sentencia 99,” which is also his Instagram handle. So that’s why he insists on wearing a belt emblazoned with a number that isn’t his uniform number. Personally, I find that much more annoying than the strikeout celebration. (In case anyone’s wondering, No. 99 is available. The last Met to wear it was pitcher Taijuan Walker in 2022. It’s not clear if Yan requested it when he was called up last week, but they may as well assign it to him, if only so his jersey will match his belt.)

The Mets open a three-game series tonight in Atlanta. Yan is well-rested — he last pitched on Friday — so there’s a good chance he’ll get the call at some point tonight. Stay tuned.

(Special thanks to Jerry Wolper for invaluable fact-checking assistance.)

An Important Note

I’m pretty happy with the way things have gotten started with this new Substack version of Uni Watch, and I’m feeling like I can keep this up for a bit. So the next post — which will be published either later this week or early next week — will be the last freebie. After that, new content will be available only to paid subscribers. (Content that was originally free, like this post you’re reading right now, will remain freely accessible in the archive.)

I realize some of you may not want to pay for Uni Watch, and of course that’s fine. For my part, I don’t want to write for free, and that’s also fine. If our priorities align in a way that results in you staying on as a reader, that’s great! If not, so be it. Either way, I hope you’ve enjoyed the Substack rollout.

Uni Watch, created by Paul Lukas, has been covering the world of athletics aesthetics since 1999. He also writes Inconspicuous Consumption, which is sort of like Uni Watch for everything other than sports.

Subscribe now

An interesting news story recently began circulating here in New York City, after someone spotted a bunch of rays — the fish — swimming in Newtown Creek, one of the city’s most notoriously polluted waterways. The wildlife sighting was fun, and it’s a promising sign that recent Newtown clean-up efforts may be succeeding. But my big takeaway from the story was the revelation that a school of rays is collectively known as a fever. As in, a pride of lions, a gaggle of geese, a pod of whales, a fever of rays.

Naturally, this got me thinking about MLB’s Tampa Bay Rays. Although they excised the “Devil” from their original team name in 2007 and made their brand identity more solar than piscine, they still have the ray logo swimming along on their jersey sleeve. A marketing slogan like “Catch Rays Fever” seems like it would be a natural, right? The promotional campaign could even be called the Fever Pitch!

And here’s another wrinkle: As you may know, Rays fans love their cowbells, a tradition that dates back to 2006, when Saturday Night Live’s famous “More Cowbell” sketch was shown on the team’s scoreboard. And what is the signature line in that sketch? It’s when Christopher Walken says, “I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!” So that’s another connection between “fever” and the Rays.

Despite all of this, some basic Googling couldn’t turn up any evidence of the Rays ever using “Rays Fever” or any similar promotional slogan. Then again, I don’t watch Rays games on TV or follow the team on social media — could they have been pushing the “fever” angle all along and I just didn’t realize it?

So I emailed the team a few days ago and asked if they’d ever taken a “fever”-ish marketing approach. They didn’t respond (dealing with the MLB trade deadline was apparently more important, go figure), so I rounded up a bunch of longtime Rays fans on the internet and asked if they could recall the team ever leveraging the “fever” angle. They all said no.

Really? If anyone from the Rays is reading this, I strongly suggest that you take steps to remedy this longstanding oversight. Think of the possibilities: A fever of live rays swimming in a thermometer-shaped aquarium! Ticket discounts for families or groups who come to the ballpark dressed as a fever of rays! Staffers who dress up as doctors and roam the ballpark diagnosing fans with Rays fever! Christopher Walken throwing out the first pitch!

It’s all there for the taking, people. You just have to get together and swim toward it — feverishly, of course.

Uni Watch, created by Paul Lukas, has been covering the world of athletics aesthetics since 1999. He also writes Inconspicuous Consumption, which is sort of like Uni Watch for everything other than sports.

Subscribe now

The great DIYer Wafflebored was recently in town for a few weeks. I took him to my favorite vintage clothing shop, where he quickly located a rack full of old jerseys. I was particularly interested in the 1950s-ish baseball jersey shown above, because it still had its original hang tag — a rarity for a vintage clothing item, and even more so for an old jersey.

Let’s zoom in for a closer look at that tag:

Love it! Such a nice piece of two-color design. I particularly like the bookended basketball players at the bottom. I’m presuming the “M” on the guy’s jersey is for “Maple.”

But it wasn’t until I got home and looked again at the photo that I realized the weirdest thing about the hang tag: The baseball player is laying down a bunt! I realize bunting was a bigger part of the game when this jersey was produced than it is today, and I want to make it clear that I have plenty of respect for bunting as a skill and as a strategy, but this depiction still seems like a very odd choice. I mean, who makes a purchasing decision based on an image of someone bunting? Wouldn’t it be better to show a pitcher in mid-windup, a batter about to swing, an outfielder reaching for a fly ball, or something along those lines?

Since the illustration of the bunting ballplayer shows that his uni number ends in a zero, it made me think of midcentury Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto, who wore No. 10 and was such an accomplished bunter that he led the American League in sacrifices for four consecutive seasons!

The Rizzuto connection notwithstanding, I was still puzzled by the choice of putting a bunter on the hang tag. I thought to myself, “Topps would never show someone bunting on their baseball card, would they?” Wrong — turns out there’s a shit-ton of Topps cards that show players bunting. There’s even a SABR article about that very topic!

That got me thinking: What would be the football, basketball, or hockey equivalents of a bunt, at least in visual terms? Like, if you wanted to show a player in those sports doing something unglamorous and arguably even a bit unmanly-seeming, what would it be? Hmmm.

Share

Getting back to the vintage jersey that Wafflebored found, here’s a look at the inside of the hang tag, along with the brand label on the jersey’s inner collar:

I was not familiar with Maple Athletic, but some quick research reveals that they were an old-school sportswear manufacturer that lasted into the late 1990s. The company’s founder, Martin Surkin, died in 2012 at the age of 92. That prompted Ebbets Field Flannels founder Jerry Cohen to write a nice obituary, in which he explained how Maple did lots of work for Ebbets and for Mitchell & Ness when those two operations were getting started.

There are about two dozen vintage Maple items — jackets, mostly, along with a few other products — currently available on eBay. None of them appears to come with an original hang tag, but I was intrigued by this pair of satin basketball shorts that are being offered with their original box:

Very nice! And to think that we learned all of this because Wafflebored found an interesting jersey at a vintage shop. I love it when things just develop spontaneously like that.

Speaking of which, Wafflebored felt pretty certain that the vintage Maple jersey would fit me well, so I went ahead and tried it on:

Not a bad fit, but I can’t get too excited about a jersey that’s blank on both sides. Fortunately, the hang tag provided plenty of interest all by itself.

Meanwhile, to learn about another rabbit hole that resulted from our visit to that vintage shop, check out this recent post over on Inconspicuous Consumption.

Uni Watch, created by Paul Lukas, has been covering the world of athletics aesthetics since 1999. He also writes Inconspicuous Consumption, which is sort of like Uni Watch for everything other than sports.

Subscribe now

Bizarre scene in yesterday’s Mets/Marlins game, as Miami outfielder Esteury Ruiz, who had opened the top of the 8th with a single and then advanced to second when the next batter walked, repeatedly took his lead in front of second base, something I’m quite certain I’ve never seen before.

Ruiz did this for at least four pitches. Mets broadcaster Daniel Murphy said that Ruiz was probably trying to get a better view of pitcher Jonathan Pintaro’s glove so he could spot the grip and give a signal to the hitter, although that was just speculation. Maybe he was just trying to get into Pintaro’s head.

Whatever Ruiz’s objective, it looked seriously weird. Here are some additional shots:

I admit that I love the novelty of it. It really reaffirms the old cliché that you can watch baseball for your whole life and still routinely see things you’ve never seen before.

Share

Of course, taking your lead in front of the baseline — or in back of it, for that matter — just puts you farther away from the next base, since the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But that was the least of Ruiz’s problems: He was so engrossed in his own shenanigans that he forgot to run on a 3-2 pitch with two outs. (That pitch was fouled off, and he did remember to run on the subsequent pitch.)

Meanwhile, as you can see in those shots, the Mets wore 1986 throwbacks yesterday, because they were celebrating the 40th anniversary of their ’86 championship team. Plenty of game photos here, and here’s video of the pregame ceremony featuring a reunion of the surviving team members from the ’86 squad (for reasons that aren’t clear to me, the YouTube thumbnail image on this video is flopped):

Uni Watch, created by Paul Lukas, has been covering the world of athletics aesthetics since 1999. He also writes Inconspicuous Consumption, which is sort of like Uni Watch for everything other than sports.

Subscribe now

Hello! Welcome to the first new Uni Watch post on Substack. I’ll be posting here occasionally, with no set schedule, in the weeks and months to come. You can learn more about Uni Watch on Substack here; if you haven’t already subscribed, you can do that here. Enjoy! — Paul

As you can see in the graphic shown above, the Rockies will be unveiling two statues at their ballpark later this summer — one for Larry Walker and one for Todd Helton. Some teams keep their statue designs under wraps until the unveiling, but the Rockies have given us a sneak peek by revealing the replica giveaways that will be distributed on the unveiling dates.

Let’s take a closer look at that Larry Walker statue design:

Whoa — he’s wearing the Turn Ahead the Clock uniform! That’s because the statue’s pose is based on Walker’s game-winning homer on August 18th, 1999, when the Rockies were wearing the futuristic threads for their home game against Atlanta. Here’s a photo of Walker’s home run follow-through, followed by a video clip of the home run that shows his pose from several different angles:

If you look again at the photo of the statue, it appears that the sculptor cheated a bit by giving Walker real jersey sleeves, instead of the weird cap sleeves that the TATC jerseys actually had. (Or least that’s the case on the replica giveaway; maybe the real statue has more accurate sleeves.) But even with that compromise, it’s pretty amazing to see the futuristic uni immortalized on a statue.

Most of the teams participating in the TATC program played just one TATC game, so for a second I thought to myself, “They’re statue-fying a uniform that was worn on the field only one time!” It turns out, however, that the Rockies wore the TATC uniforms for one other game that year (on July 30th, on the road against the Cardinals). But even though Colorado’s TATC uni was two-and-phew instead of one-and-done, it still almost certainly sets an MLB record for a uniform’s fewest on-field appearances before being depicted on a stadium statue.

Share Uni Watch

But was this home run really such a defining moment in Walker’s career that it deserves to be carved in stone (or cast in metal, or whatever)? The Rockies definitely think so. When Walker’s election to the Baseball Hall of Fame was announced in 2020, the team honored him with a logo whose design was clearly based on the TATC home run pose, and they also released a bobblehead based on the TATC homer:

The team’s merch shop even refers to “Larry Walk-off” when the TATC jerseys are in stock:

So let that be a lesson to everyone: If you’re going to do something memorable, be careful which uniform you do it in, because you might be immortalizing a clown suit! (Rockies fan and Uni Watch pal Ron Ruelle points out that it could have been worse: They could have based the statue on Walker’s backwards-helmet stunt in the 1997 All-Star Game.)

While we’re at it, let’s take a look at the Todd Helton statue design:

That’s the pose that Helton struck as he recorded the final out of the 2007 National League Championship Series, sending the Rockies to their first World Series. Again, here’s a photo and a video clip:

The Rockies were wearing their alternate black vests for that game, so that’s what’s depicted on Helton’s statue. The team thus finds itself in the unusual position of unveiling two new statues without either of them depicting the team’s primary home or road uniform — a particularly odd state of affairs when you consider that the home and road designs have been largely unchanged throughout the team’s 33-year history. (But hey, at least they didn’t use the wrong number font.)

All of which raises some interesting questions: What are some of the other most unusual or counterintuitive uniforms that have gotten the statue treatment? When designing a sports statue, should the goal be to honor a particular historical moment, regardless of its aesthetics, or should the team’s classic uniform get precedence? And is it okay that the sculptor may have taken some liberties with the TATC sleeves, or does that defeat the whole point of depicting a historical moment?

These questions are similar to the endless debates surrounding which cap logo should appear on a player’s Hall of Fame plaque. I’m not sure there are any “right” or “wrong” answers, but it’s all fun grist for the mill. Discuss!

(Special thanks to Ron Ruelle for bringing Walker’s TATC statue design to my attention, and for letting me know about the Walker logo and bobblehead.)

Subscribe now

Bannermark Update

Remember the MLB “bannermark” logo, which I recently wrote about? Reader Jay Roddy reports that the bannermark appears on the covers of these vintage MLB rulebooks published by The Sporting News in the 1970s. The photo popped up in a Facebook group devoted to baseball books that Jay belongs to.

So now we know that the bannermark appeared on the All-Star MVP trophy, the cover of the 1970 All-Star Game program, World Series tickets from 1970 through 1976, and now these Sporting News rulebook editions. I’m wondering where else it appeared!

Big Brannock News

As most of you know, I’m a huge fan of the Brannock Device (that gizmo they use to measure your shoe size) and even got to throw out the first pitch when the Syracuse Chiefs held a “Brannock Device Night” promotion back in 2018. So I was super-stoked when the great design podcast 99% Invisible recently decided to do a Brannock episode as part of their new “A History of the United States in 100 Objects” project, and then I was even more excited when they asked me to be a big part of that episode.

The episode, which is mostly a conversation between myself and 99PI host/founder Roman Mars, has been in the works for a few months and is now complete. It’s currently available to SiriusXM subscribers, and it will go public for everyone else this Friday, July 31st. I hope you’ll check it out!

Uni Watch, created by Paul Lukas, has been covering the world of athletics aesthetics since 1999. He also writes Inconspicuous Consumption, which is sort of like Uni Watch for everything other than sports.

Hello! If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that you recently subscribed to Uni Watch here on Substack. Big thanks to all of you who’ve subscribed, and doubleplusthanks to those of you who voluntarily paid to subscribe even though there’s no paywall on this content (at least for now). I’m grateful for your support.

We’ll be getting started soon with new content. Meanwhile, here are some things to keep in mind about this latest version of Uni Watch:

• If you haven’t already done so, check out the new Uni Watch home page. You can use the navigation bar — the one underneath the Uni Watch script near the top of the page — to check out the “About” page, the “Projects” pages, the archive, and so on.

• I’ve done my best to proofread all those new pages, but it’s entirely possible — maybe even probable — that I missed a few typos. If you spot anything that looks amiss, please email me so I can make the proper fix. I want the site to be as clean as possible. Thanks!

• The archive currently consists of about two dozen posts that I wrote over the past few months for the Uni Watch blog (which will be shutting down at the end of July). I’ve ported those posts over here to provide a sense of continuity.

• I’ll be posting here occasionally, with no set schedule. There might be several posts one week and then no posts the following week. My hope is that this will make every post feel like a nice surprise when it arrives in your in-box.

• Speaking of which: People often describe Substack as a newsletter platform, but I prefer to think of it as a blogging platform that also sends out email reminders. Or to put it another way: As a subscriber, you will receive every new Uni Watch post via email, but that doesn’t mean you have to read the emailed versions of the posts. If you click on the headline at the top of the emailed article (for this post that you’re reading right now, it’s “Welcome to Uni Watch on Substack!”), it will take you to the web version of the article, which usually has better formatting than the emailed version. Think of it this way: The emailed version lets you know there’s a new article to read, but the web version provides the best reading experience for that article. (The experience is even better if you read the article on a computer instead of on your phone, but I realize that’s probably a losing battle at this point.)

• “Liking” (or “hearting”) an article is helpful from an algorithmic standpoint, plus it makes your friendly uniform columnist happy. So if you like what you’re reading here, go ahead and click that heart icon!

• There are no ads on Substack, so you’ll always have a clean, uncluttered reading experience.

• All content here on Uni Watch is free for now. If things go well over the first few weeks, I may add a paywall, just so I’m not working for free. If you’re currently a free subscriber and would like to support my work by upgrading to a paid subscription now, even though it’s not yet required, you can do that here (thank you!).

• I’ve tried to spread the word about Uni Watch’s move to Substack, but Uni Watch no longer has a presence on social media, and I’m not very active on social myself these days, so lots of people out there probably aren’t aware of this new chapter in Uni Watch’s existence. If you could help spread the word, share links via social media or by emailing friends, etc., that would help to re-establish our comm-uni-ty. Thanks!

Share Uni Watch

• I’m not really looking to do big merch projects these days, but some basic Uni Watch products are available here. I’m also selling off some old uniform style guides and catalogs and a pair of unique Uni Watch football helmets. And hey, if you’re really feeling ambitious, Uni Watch itself is for sale!

• As many of you know, I have another Substack, called Inconspicuous Consumption, which is sort of like Uni Watch for everything other than sports. You can check it out here.

I think that’s it for now. I’ll publish our first new article early next week. Meanwhile, if you have questions, feel free to post them in the comments and I’ll do my best to respond. Thanks again for following Uni Watch to its new home.

Uni Watch, created by Paul Lukas, has been covering the world of athletics aesthetics since 1999.

Subscribe now

This season’s MLB All-Star Game will take place next Tuesday in Philadelphia. By the night’s end, one player will have been selected as the game’s MVP and will therefore win the Ted Williams MVP Award, which is a glass bat.

But when I was growing up in the 1970s, the All-Star MVP won something called the Commissioner’s Award (not to be confused with the Commissioner’s Trophy, which is presented to the World Series championship team). Red Sox outfielder Carl Yastrzemski won it in 1970 and later showed it to Richard Nixon at the White House (see above).

It’s hard to see clearly in that photo, but the Commissioner’s Award had an unusual logo. You can get a better look at it in this shot of Pirates outfielder Dave Parker, who was the All-Star MVP in 1979:

I remember being fascinated by that logo as a kid, because it didn’t seem to appear anywhere else except on that trophy. Also, I was intrigued by the word “baseball” being rendered in all-lowercase lettering (a topic we’ve recently explored here on Uni Watch).

I didn’t know it at the time, but that logo had debuted at the 1970 All-Star Game, where it was featured not just on Yaz’s MVP trophy but also on the program cover:

The program included a note about the logo, which the mighty Fleer Sticker Project showcased back in 2015:

So there you go — the bannermark! The New York Times reported that the design was unveiled at a luncheon the day before the All-Star Game, where then-commish Bowie Kuhn invoked an amusing spoonerism while trying to say “symbol or emblem”:

Ah, Bowie Kuhn. That takes me back.

Let’s take a closer look at this symblem — er, symbol:

Not really such a great design. I’m particularly irked at how the “laces” on the baseball are red, which ruins the symmetry of the design. Shouldn’t the top part of the laces be blue, leading to a gradient in the center that resolves as red at the bottom?

The bannermark unveiling wasn’t the only notable thing about the 1970 All-Star Game. That year marked the first time since 1957 years that fans had been permitted to vote on the starting rosters. (Commissioner Ford Frick had eliminated fan voting after Reds fans stuffed the ballot box in ’57.) So you’d think the bannermark would appear on the ballots, right? Wrong. The 1970 ballots instead featured the silhouetted-batter mark, which had debuted the previous year as MLB’s centennial logo:

Perhaps that isn’t so surprising, because the bannermark never achieved full public-facing traction and was used mostly behind the scenes, as MLB designer/historian Todd Radom explained in a Fleer Sticker Project comment:

The “bannermark” — also called the “Commissioner’s Mark” — was used on MLB letterheads, media guides, awards, and ceremonially distributed trinkets such as cufflinks and tie bars, as well as in-house communication during the Bowie Kuhn years. It was eliminated when Peter Ueberroth took over in 1984.

But the bannermark did have pride of place from 1970 through 1976 on World Series tickets (except, for some reason, on the Reds’ 1972 tix). Here’s a year-by-year look at the tickets from each of those seasons:

The design firm that created the bannermark, deMartin-Marona & Associates, was active from the 1960s through the ’90s. They mostly handled a lot of corporate branding (including the 1968 revision of the Morton Salt girl), but their portfolio included at least one other notable sports-related credit: They designed the uniforms, logos, and visual system that the Phillies introduced in 1970, the same year that the bannermark debuted:

Hmmm, an all-lowercase wordmark with a stylized baseball as its focal point — seem familiar? It’s just like the bannermark! deMartin-Marona & Associates got a lot of mileage out of that approach in 1970. But unlike the Phils’ 1970s look, which is still remembered fondly, the bannermark is just an obscure footnote in MLB’s visual history.

Subscribe now

Note: This post is being published simultaneously on Uni Watch and also over at Inconspicuous Consumption. — Paul

I recently published an Inconspicuous Consumption article about JFK half-dollars. That prompted an interesting email from reader Dave Truman, as follows:

I spent about 15 years as a lacrosse referee in St. Louis, and they always taught the new guys to use half-dollars for the coin toss. (The logic was probably connected to the size of the coins: easy to flip, easy to catch, easier to find in the grass if you dropped it, etc.) … Usually I had to go get them at a bank, but on the rare occasions when I got one as change, I made sure to put it into my equipment bag.

That got me thinking: What do other referees use for coin tosses? I figured I probably have plenty of readers besides Dave who’ve done some sports officiating, so I invited Uni Watch readers and Inconspicuous Consumption readers to share any noteworthy stories they might have about coin tosses.

I got lots of responses (thank you!), some of which veered off into fun non-sports directions. Here are the most interesting ones:

Skyler Archibald

I typically use a coin provided by our officiating association. I have a few of them (see above) that I’ve collected over the years as a part of different associations or have acquired as a result of officiating at some state tournaments.

One cool tradition I’ve seen was in Washington State. The officials for some playoff games are from all different associations or regions around the state, so each official would bring something from their “home” association — often a coin — for the other officials, and then you’d share those things with the crew before the game. Kinda fun to see what other associations are using.

The coin toss procedures for youth or middle school football games are often a bit less structured. Depending on the weather, the officials might be wearing shorts, which is less friendly for carrying a coin during the game. So the officials often skip the coin and have the captains do “Rock, paper, scissors” instead, which is really fun.

Some referees like to catch the coin, some like to let it hit the ground. The best referees will indicate beforehand how they’ll be handling it. I’ve had many a chuckle over referees who try to catch it and drop it, which happens often.

Randy McCallum

To supplement my income when I was in the Army, I would umpire games in the leagues of whatever post I was at. If I was new to the post, I’d use the challenge coin from the highest-ranking person at my last post (see photo above). Whenever I got a new challenge coin from a new base, I would start using that and then upgrade every time I got another challenge coin from a higher-ranking person.

Now I umpire a sober league, so I use my 10-year coin for games.

Mike Styczen

I’m not a ref but I’m a curler. We do our own coin toss for hammer (i.e., who gets “last licks”) at the beginning of every game. I’ve kept the same toonie (shown above) in the zippered back pocket of my curling pants for a decade. I don’t even take it out when I wash the pants, so there’s always a coin.

But when there’s no coin for whatever reason, we use the stopwatch app on someone’s phone and play “odd/even.” You start the timer, one team calls “odd” or “even,” you stop the timer, and the last hundredths digit of the timer determines the winner.

Joe Lombardo

My son played flag football until he was 14. Instead of a coin, they did “laces or no laces”: The ref (usually a 19-year-old kid working for the YMCA) would throw the ball in the air, and you’d win or loss depending on whether it came to rest with the laces facing up or down.

My son also played high school tennis, which had no officials — the boys always officiated themselves and were on their honor. But the players still had to decide who served first, and no 17-year-old kid is carrying pocket change on the court, so they’d flip a racket, and you’d call something, like the “W” on a Wilson racket facing up or down, something like that. I remember this clearly, because I cringed every time the $350 racket that I bought for him got thrown.

Christopher Carvalho

I’m a high school rugby ref out here in Connecticut. My old boys’ rugby team had challenge coins made up for when we traveled and went to tournaments, so I use that (shown above). The “heads” design has our insignia — an hourglass — and “tails” has the logos or insignia of our five “feeder” clubs.

It’s nice and heavy and easy to spot on the pitch. When I’m not reffing, I make sure to have it on me at the drink-up or I’m buying a round for whoever catches me without it!

Brad Evers

Soccer ref here. I opt for a half-dollar. I know some refs use commemorative coins from tournaments they’ve worked in the past, but the half-dollar is great for me, especially when the grass is long and a quarter won’t land nicely. Even if I choose to catch the coin in that situation, the half-dollar is easy to see.

R. Scott Rogers

Curling games begin with a coin flip, and it’s quite common for neither of the designated coin-tossers to have a coin on hand. I’ve seen people resort to flipping wildly inappropriate things like gloves or gripper pads. So when I curled, I took to carrying a 2007 Madison dollar in my curling vest pocket, just in case nobody else had a coin. I chose the James Madison coin because the Madison Curling Club was my home club, which made the coin a good conversation starter. On home ice, folks would think it was neat; at out-of-town tournaments, it would get people asking about the Madison club.

Joe Jordan

I’m an athletics administrator for a Division III athletics program. I had the privilege to use this Keith Jackson challenge coin (shown above) as the coin-flip tiebreaker to decide the designated home team in the 2024 NCAA DIII Baseball regionals. Our team won the flip but lost the game.

The coin was given to me by a dear friend who knows I love the Rose Bowl and Keith Jackson! When not in use at baseball games, I keep the coin on display in my office and refer often to Keith’s Nine Core Values.

Whoa, Nelly!

Eric Bangeman

When I refereed rugby, I used a 1921 Morgan silver dollar for coin tosses. I was a coin collector, and this was a “pocket piece,” as it was a duplicate and not in great condition. Usually one of the captains would comment on it during the coin toss, and sometimes I’d give a very brief numismatic or history lesson.

Unfortunately, the coin fell out of my pocket during a match and I was unable to locate it on the pitch afterwards. After that, I used a USA Rugby coin for tosses.

Amer Shamaa

I’m a licensed official in four sports here in Indiana. I’m not senior enough to do a coin flip for football (that’s usually reserved for ref), but I used to keep a quarter or at least a nickel on hand for basketball in the case of tournament play or where there wasn’t a visible possession arrow visible. I’d switch pockets to keep track of possession. I did that until I switched to doing the same thing with a backup whistle.

Jay Roddy

As a baseball umpire, I don’t normally need a coin. But in travel tournaments, and occasionally in youth ball, it’s not always clear which team is the home team, so I try to be prepared with a quarter. If I forget or am surprised by the question at the pregame plate conference, we’ll flip a ball/strike indicator (i.e., the clicker). Typically, the team that has traveled farthest gets to call it. Heads is the side with the numbers; the plain side is tails.

Joe Bailey

I’m going into my 26th year of officiating high school football. When I started, 2001, I went on eBay and found a commemorative Cleveland Browns coin marking their return to the NFL in ’99 (shown above). I’m predominantly an umpire at the varsity level, so we don’t use my coin for those games. But I’m sometimes the referee for JV and youth games. I tell the captains, “The helmet is heads and the writing is tails.” (Oh, the Browns went 2-14 that season.)

In addition, my chapter of the NYS Football Officials created a coin for our members to use, which is much more traditional:

Matt Maldre

In my house, there are often disputes over who picks what to watch on TV, who gets to sit in the front seat, and so on. We resolve these disputes by using an official family coin — a French Piastre from 1908 (shown above). I originally got it mostly because I wanted to own something from 1908 when the Cubs last won the World Series, just so I could hold something in my hand that physically existed from that time period. (There’s more information about the coin and its role in our family here.)

Curt Rogers

I’ve been a soccer referee for 36 years. Leagues and tournaments will often given out special coins to use. One annual tourney in particular gave out a commemorative coin with a slightly different design each year, usually incorporating the tournament logo (see above). The thing I remember about those in particular is that they were heavy — much heavier than a normal coin, so you really had to put some oomph into it when you flipped it. My favorite version of the coin was the year they made it square, which I thought was really unique.

Derek Linn

I refereed soccer from 2011-2022. I almost always used an Eisenhower silver dollar for high school games and I used the NISOA coin (shown above) for college games. When I used the Eisenhower coin, I would always ask the captains who the silhouette was, and I don’t think anyone ever got it correct.

Anonymous

I’m not a referee, but in 2023 I took my son to an Indoor Football League game, and the head referee gave him the coin used for the opening coin toss (shown above) — a very cool move.

The “coin” is plastic and appears to be more of a customized poker chip than a traditional coin, though it has enough heft that some metal may be inside. The obverse features the IFL logo, while the reverse includes the logos of 12 IFL teams. Interestingly, there are 12 team logos, which appears to correspond with the IFL’s 2021 season; they were up to 14 teams in 2023, when my son received the coin.

Gabe Cornwall

My mother officiated D1 and WUSA soccer and college basketball for more than 20 years. She kept a 1921 Peace silver dollar for coin-flipping purposes. Her husband in those days — my late stepfather — was an enthusiastic numismatist, so I’m sure that had plenty to do with which coin she chose. My mother still has his coin collection, which includes 1921 dollar.

Jeff Economy

This is not about refereeing exactly, but the coin toss conversation immediately reminded me of the 1971 Australian film Wake in Fright. If you’ve not seen it, you’re in for a wild ride. It has been synopsized thusly: “After a bad gambling bet, a schoolteacher is marooned in a town full of crazy, drunk, violent men who threaten to make him just as crazy, drunk, and violent.” The gambling debt has to do with a coin toss game, and although I don’t think using half-dollars would have affected the outcome, it does make me wonder how a small-town American version of the same concept would play out if centered around the saintly profile of the fallen JFK.

———

Paul here. Good stuff! Big thanks to everyone for sharing your stories, and doubleplusthanks to Dave Truman for getting the ball rolling on this one.

Subscribe now

As you’ve probably heard, the Mets fired manager Carlos Mendoza last Friday. As a Mets fan, I heartily approve of the decision.

Just to be clear, my issues with Mendoza had nothing to do with his in-game management. Like most of today’s big league skippers, he was basically a cross between a functionary and a babysitter, with the front office making most of the decisions regarding roster composition, the daily lineup and batting order, the starting rotation, bullpen use, the running game, and so on.

My gripe with Mendoza had more to do with his communication style. I found him profoundly boring during his pre- and postgame interview sessions. Lots of canned quotes, clichés, empty platitudes, always playing it safe. No wit, no playfulness, no emotion, no fire, no intellectual curiosity. In short, he was boring — a forgivable shortcoming if you happen to be managing a good team but a mortal sin on a bad team like the Mets. I haven’t yet listened to an interview session with Mendoza’s interim replacement, Andy Green, but he can’t possibly be worse than Mendoza in this regard.

Mendoza’s lackluster public profile is symptomatic of a larger issue. MLB managers used to be interesting, colorful characters — loud, profane, arrogant, funny, projecting a sense of authority — but now they’re mostly bland technocrats at best, automatons at worst. They’re not so much managers as corporate middle managers. The decisionmaking, as noted above, is largely done by the GM and his staff. Meanwhile, the players make so much money that the managers no longer wield any real disciplinary power, so the skipper is basically an empty suit (or, if you prefer, an empty uniform). Worst of all, video-replay challenges and the new ABS system have mostly eliminated the entertaining spectacle of managers running onto the field and jawing with umpires, which was one of the best ways for a skipper to show off his personal style. In fact, we just passed the 25th anniversary of Pirates manager Lloyd McClendon stealing a base — literally.

Good luck seeing anything that entertaining from a current MLB manager.

The video challenge process really captures the emptiness of the current managerial role. Let’s say there’s a close call at second base. The bench coach will typically get on the phone from the dugout to the team’s video guru, who’s located somewhere in the bowels of the clubhouse. If the play looks like a bad call, the video guru will tell the bench coach, who then nods at the manager, who then signals the umpire by pantomiming the act of putting on headphones:

There’s something so stultifyingly bureaucratic about this process. Like, it somehow takes three separate people to get to the point where the manager can officially challenge a call by making a cringey hand gesture.

And that’s often the closest thing to an expressive, performative moment that a big league skipper will get to have in a game these days. He’ll likely spend the rest of the game poring over analytics on an iPad and conferring in whispered asides with his bench coach and pitching coach. In most cases, he’ll be doing all of this while wearing a pullover windbreaker or a hoodie (although Mendoza, to his credit, usually wore a proper jersey). I hate the pullover/hoodie look, but I have to admit that it seems to fit the public-facing persona that most managers exhibit these days. That persona isn’t entirely the managers’ fault — it comes with the system they now work within, and GMs are clearly hiring guys who’ll be okay working within that system — but it’s still a drag.

All of which brings us back to Carlos Mendoza. They way I see it, the front office calls so many of the shots these days that it doesn’t really matter that much who the manager is, at least from a wins/losses perspective. Whoever is installed in the position will execute the plan he’s given, push the buttons he’s told to push, and so on. So with everything else being equal, I’d at least like to have someone whose personal style is somewhat entertaining. And with so many traditional parts of the job having been neutered out of existence, pretty much the only remaining place for a skipper to express that personal style is in the pre- and postgame media availabilities.

That’s all I’m asking for as a fan: Give me a manager who’s interesting to listen to before and after the game. Mendoza was a total snooze in that regard, so good riddance. As for Andy Green, he’s already announced that he doesn’t want to keep the job next year, so maybe that will free him up to speak his mind a bit more. We’ll see.

Subscribe now

I almost never look at Twitter these days. About the only exception is that I’ll check the Mets’ Twitter feed if there’s inclement weather on gameday, because they’re pretty good about saying if a game has been postponed or delayed. That’s what I did yesterday afternoon around 4:30pm, because the forecast here in New York called for evening thunderstorms, so I wanted to see if the Mets’ home game against the Cubs had been called off. As it turned out, there was no mention of the weather. Instead, the most recent tweet at the top of the feed showed the Mets’ starting lineup for the game (as shown above).

For some reason, I was struck by the all-lowercase lettering. Was that a new thing, or had they been doing it for a while and I just didn’t realize? I scrolled down a bit and soon found this:

Then I realized that even the header image on the Mets’ feed featured lowercase lettering:

Was this an MLB-wide thing? Nope — I checked a few other teams’ Twitter feeds and saw the usual mix of all-caps and title case. So I went back to the Mets’ feed and quickly discovered that their graphics have been using all-lowercase (at least for the display type, and sometimes for the body type as well) for birthday announcements, holiday celebrations, roster updates, and just about everything else. Check this out (you can click on the images to see the full, uncropped versions):

I checked with Mets Police blogger Shannon Shark, who confirmed that the Great Lowercasing began at the start of this season. It’s not clear to me if the Mets are also using this typographic protocol in other parts of their visual program, like on scoreboard graphics. (Anyone..?)

I have nothing against all-lowercase typography per se. It was originally pioneered by the Bauhaus and later became popular in various forms of midcentury advertising, graphic design, package design, and branding, much of which I like quite a bit. It’s also come up here and there in sports uni and logo design — here are a few examples:

Other practitioners of athletics aesthetics also got into the act, such as when the Topps 1971 baseball card set had the player names and positions styled in all-lowercase:

So I guess you could say that there’s some sports-related precedent for what the Mets are doing on their Twitter feed. Plus I realize that many people have stopped bothering to use capital letters in their text messages and emails, so I guess you could also say that the Mets are just mirroring what’s going on in other parts of the culture. Plus-plus the Mets had an MLB-record three players with lowercase letters in their NOBs back in 2014, so I guess you could also-also say that if any team is gonna go this route with their social media messaging, it should be them. And I have to admit that some of those tweets are very nice from a visual composition standpoint.

But still. Seeing all of those names in the starting lineup rendered in all-lowercase looks silly, and seeing the team’s name styled that way makes me itchy. It’s the kind of thing that might seem endearingly eccentric if a good team did it, or maybe a small-market underdog team. But the Mets play in the biggest market, have the second-highest payroll, and are in last place, so cutesy typographic maneuvers seem tone-deaf.

Meanwhile, last night’s game ended up being rained out after all, at which point the Mets’ Twitter feed provided the perfect punchline for this post:

———

Update: When the rainout was announced last night on the scoreboard at the Mets’ ballpark, the words “Game Update” were in title case, not all-lowercase. But note the lowercase team names on the ribbon board at right:

Subscribe now

Bo Bichette signed with the Mets as a free agent prior to the start of this season, so I’ve had near-daily exposure to his signature uni style of wearing “pants” that are really more like biker shorts and blue socks that never quite match his blue base-layer leggings, as seen in the photo above.

The color-match problem is less of an issue when the Mets are wearing black, although the pants are still disconcertingly short:

The super-short inseam is nothing new for Bichette, of course. He established this approach during his years with the Blue Jays:

And Bichette isn’t the only one. It used to be unheard of for a ballplayer to wear his pants above his kneecaps, but this look has now gained enough devotees over the past decade or so for it to qualify as a full-fledged uni style, not just a fringe eccentricity. The trend, while still in its formative stages, is similar to what we’ve seen in the NFL, where pants terminating above the knee have become more the rule than the exception in recent years.

I can’t say I’m a fan (on either the diamond or the gridiron), but I’ve always been fascinated by the evolution of MLB’s pant/hosiery intersection, so I can’t help but fixate on this latest development, even if I’m mostly just rubbernecking. Here are 10 other players, past and present, who’ve exemplified the super-high-cuffed style:

1. Hunter Pence

To my mind, Pence was the pioneer of exposed-kneecap style, with all the other players on this list essentially descending from him. The style worked for him because he already seemed like a bit of an oddball character (plus “Hunter Pence” sorta/kinda rhymes with “underpants,” which goes with the look). Although Pence is now retired, his unusual aesthetic legacy lives on. Which brings us to…

2. Carlos Santana

I’m pretty sure Santana was the next player after Pence to expose his knees. He probably holds the record for wearing this style with the most teams, including the Guardians, Phillies, Royals, Mariners, Pirates, Brewers, Twins, Cubs, and — wait for it — D-backs.

3. Joc Pederson

Originally a pajamist, Pederson began cuffing above the knee in 2020, which was his final season with the Dodgers. He has since worn this look with the Cubs, Giants, D-backs, and Rangers.

4. Dennis Santana

Dennis Santana (no relation to Carlos) is one of the few MLB pitchers to have gone super-high-cuffed. It seems appropriate that the video embedded above is from YouTube Shorts.

5. Oneil Cruz

Another Bucco who favors this style. Yet another Pirate, Jack Suwinski (now in the Dodgers’ minor league system), also dabbled with it last year.

6 and 7. Geraldo Perdomo and Ildemaro Vargas

The two Arizona middle infielders are often on the field at the same time, forming MLB’s highest-cuffed double-play combination. (Vargas has also exposed his knees for the Twins, Cubs, Pirates, and Nats.)

8. Jonathan India

After going super-high-cuffed while breaking in with the Reds, India now wears this style for the Royals.

9. Adam Cimber

Cimber began his career as a conventional high-cuffer, with the pants covering his knee. He shortened his inseam during his stint with the Blue Jays and then took that style with him to the Angels. He’s now out of baseball.

10. Edwin Arroyo

This Reds infielder is a new member of the club, having made his big league debut earlier this month. No way I would have known to include him on this list except that the Mets just played a three-game series in Cincy.

——

A few additional notes:

• I’m fairly certain there are lots of other MLBers who are going with this look without my realizing it. Feel free to list them in the comments (with photo links if possible).

• As you can see, there are lots of sub-niches within the exposed-kneecap style: Some players try to match their base layer to their socks while others don’t; some clearly wear knee pads while others don’t seem to; and so on.

• In 2019, when Hunter Pence was playing for the Rangers, a bunch of his Texas teammates saluted him on June 2 by exposing their knees. Participating players included Ronald Guzman, Shin-Soo Choo, and, most notably, Rougned Odor, who really committed to the bit. (Here are some video highlights from that game.)

• Of course, if you really want to see exposed MLB kneecaps, you have to go back 50 years to Sox in shorts.

And what does the future hold? While working on this post, I was surprised to learn that lots of sportswear brands now offer above-the-knee baseball pants as a standard stock item. That tells me we’re going to keep seeing more and more of of this look in the years to come. And maybe not just on the ballfield — just this morning, as I was preparing to publish this post, The Atlantic published an article on how shorts may soon become acceptable in the office.

Subscribe now

Note: Today we have a guest entry from reader Ken Guckenberger, who has a good story about some classic NFL merchandise. Enjoy! — Paul

By Ken Guckenberger

In 1970, NFL players held their first-ever work stoppage — a two-day strike. The following year, the NFL Players Association was officially certified as a union by the National Labor Relations Board.

The fledgling union, eager to solidify its status amongst the players as it was challenging the “Rozelle Rule” (which effectively prevented free agency by requiring teams to surrender players or draft picks after signing a free agent), decided to directly market its players’ names, images, and likenesses with an unusual merchandise line: NFLPA team trash cans, with a different can for each franchise, like the ones shown above.

With my family moving from Long Island to Miami in June of 1972, the Guckenberger boys were in need of some sports indoctrination for our new home city. Our mother took us to Zayre’s (a South Florida version of K-Mart) and got us the Dolphins’ trash can. We quizzed each other on it every night.

Although the Dolphins went on to have a perfect 17-0 season that year, our Dolphins trash can had a major imperfection: safety Dick Anderson and cornerback Lloyd Mumphord had their photos transposed — a particularly surprising error considering that the two players had different racial identities. It was very confusing to us as boys.

Our Dolphins can didn’t make the move when we left South Florida a few years later. As time went on, I wondered if I had misremembered the errors on our can. A few of the other 1972 team cans show up occasionally on eBay, but I could never find a Dolphins can. (I guess 1972 Dolphins merch is highly prized, even trash cans.) I finally found one last year and bought it. Sure enough, it has the same Anderson/Mumphord photo glitch.

On the plus side, they did get the proper spelling for Nick Buoniconti’s notoriously tricky last name, which was always the hardest name for us to spell correctly in creative writing assignments on the Dolphins.

To my knowledge, the NFLPA cans were a one-off project. I think the union might also have done football cards or other merch ventures at some point, but it all looks off-brand and kind of fake without the team logos and other trade dress. It turns out true “NIL” isn’t worth very much for 99% of football players. But I can still recite the starting 22 of that 1972 Dolphins team more than 50 years later, so those beautiful trash cans were worth something to me.

As it happens, Dick Anderson is a neighbor of a former law school classmate of mine, so I had a plan to visit my friend/classmate, have him introduce me to Anderson, and then I’d ask Anderson about the trash can. But apparently Anderson wasn’t doing too well health-wise when I was down to visit my friend, so I didn’t want to bother him. I’m told he did have a laugh about the transposed pictures last year when my friend told him about it.

Paul here. Love this story! Were these trash cans the first instance of a product line produced by a sports labor union? What other union merch has come out over the years?

Also: It’s interesting to see how the position abbreviations differ from what we’d see today. For example, you never see a cornerback identified as “RCB” or “LCB” — they’re all just “CB.” Similarly, I’ve never seen a safety designated as “LS”; maybe “FS” (free safety) and “SS” (strong safety), but usually just “S.”

Similarly, Nick Buoniconti’s “MLB” designation (for middle linebacker) really threw me for a moment, because these days we identify that abbreviation with Major League Baseball.

Please join me in thanking Ken for sharing this fun story with us!

Subscribe now

I haven’t watched much pro basketball in recent years. Sure, I’ve seen snippets of games that were being shown at bars where I happened to be hanging out, and maybe a quarter here or a half there. But Game 1 of the current NBA Finals, which took place last Wednesday, was the first NBA game I’ve watched from start to finish since before the pandemic. When I watched Game 2 two nights later, that marked the first time I’d watched two complete NBA games in the same week since, I’m guessing, the Patrick Ewing era.

All of which is to say, the first two games of this series have been given me an interesting crash course in the current state of NBA aesthetics. Here are 12 observations:

1) Both teams have very solid primary uniforms, making this a good-looking series.

2) That said, the Knicks’ current “New York” chest lettering is sooooo much less satisfying than its predecessor. It feels like the vertical arching doesn’t quite have the courage of its convictions, and more space is needed between “New” and “York,” all of which makes the current design look like a bootleg knockoff.

3) This appears to be a pretty good moment for NBA jersey fit, shorts fit, and shorts length. All the tailoring seems reasonable — nothing’s too tight, too loose, too long, or too short.

4) The “USA 250” jersey patch — a much smaller version of the one worn by the Seahawks and Patriots in the most recent Super Bowl — is innocuous enough, although it does look a bit odd when juxtaposed with the Knicks’ jersey ad promoting travel to Abu Dhabi.

5) That last tweet shows the “USA 250” patch on the jersey of Knicks guard Jalen Brunson early in Game 2. But the patch was missing from his jersey later in the game, and at least three other Knicks were also missing the patch at various points of Game 2: Miles McBride, Landry Shamet, and Karl-Anthony Towns. The patches are designed to be removed as part of a merch gimmick; it’s not clear whether the Knicks players’ patches fell off, or if the players removed them, or if the players switched to patch-free jerseys during the game.

6) As you all know, I’m no fan of jersey ads. The ones on the players’ jerseys are bad enough, but what really gets me are the ads on the refs’ jerseys, which make the officials look like they’re working in some backwater minor league. The ad on the back is particularly bad.

7) I noticed that Victor Wembanyama was wearing a plain tank top during the pregame huddle just prior to the start of Games 1 and 2. In both instances, he then pulled on his Spurs jersey as he walked onto the court for the opening tip-off. I tried to find out if this is a standard thing for him but came up empty. Anyone know more?

8) It’s crazy to think that I once wrote an ESPN column on how Kobe Bryant and a few other NBAers had begun wearing tights, which at the time seemed like a crazy development. That piece was published on Dec. 12, 2005; 20 years later, nearly all the players wear tights.

9) I know some old-schoolers probably miss the days of coaches wearing suits, but I’m fine with the current protocol of having them dress more casually (which was originally an accommodation for the pandemic and then ended up sticking).

10) In a related item, I feel like TV broadcasts used to routinely show the coaches prowling the sideline while yelling, pleading, pointing, wincing, and so on. But it seems to me that Knicks coach Mike Brown and Spurs coach Mitch Johnson have gotten very little screen time during these first two games (which is fine by me). Am I imagining things, or has this aspect of the broadcast changed?

11) This has probably been going on for ages without my realizing it, but I find it odd that games are being shown on ABC, and there’s an ABC logo at the top-right corner of the screen, but the scorebug and the reporters’ mic flags have ESPN logos:

I realize that ABC and ESPN are both owned by Disney, so they’re essentially the same company, but the logo inconsistency still seems weird to me. Like, if you’re showing the game on ABC, use ABC logos!

12) Just like everyone else, I love the sight of a nun in uniform.

———

That’s what I’ve noticed so far. Looking forward to Game 3 tonight. Go Knicks!

Subscribe now

Hello! As you may recall, I recently revived the annual Uni Watch tradition of Purple Amnesty Day. We received 18 orders for purple membership cards that day — our first membership cards of any kind since 2024. Card designer Scott M.X. Turner has now created the designs for those 18 orders, and I’ve sent the files to our printer, Bob Sullivan. After I get the printed sheets from Bob, I’ll break out my trusty X-Acto knife, straightedge, and laminator to turn the printouts into membership cards. If all goes well, I should be able to have them all mailed out to the membership enrollees by June 12-ish.

But in the meantime, I thought it would be fun to showcase these 18 new cards. Here they are, one member at a time:

Kevin Brown

This is the second time Kevin Brown has ordered a card saluting Aussie rules football player Mason Cox. The first one, which he got in 2024, was based on Cox’s Collingwood Magpies guernsey, while this new one is based on Cox’s current team, the Fremantle Dockers.

Austin Chow

We have always treated the Mighty Ducks’ original eggplant color as a shade of purple. That’s what Austin Chow went with for his first-ever membership card.

Brandon Curtis

Brandon Curtis has a long history of ordering purple membership cards, most of them based on U. of Washington uniforms. His latest card is based on the Huskies’ men’s hoops design.

Jon Eidukas

We’ve done a decent number of “purple sunrise” cards over the years, but Jon Eidukas is the first reader to pair this design motif with an infinity symbol! (We also did an infinity symbol back in 2009, for a Yankees road jersey card ordered by Ed Westfield Jr.)

Aída Jane Glusberg

Longtime reader Bob Andrews has ordered a whopping 25 membership cards over the years — more than any other reader. In 2022 he got one for his then-newborn granddaughter, Ellis Rose Andrews, and now he’s ordered one for another granddaughter, Aída Jane Glusberg. He chose a Northwestern football theme because Aída Jane and her family live in Evanston, Illinois. (Bob, incidentally, was also recently the subject of a fun post over at Inconspicuous Consumption.)

Marcus Hall

The Ravens haven’t yet played a down in their new uniforms, but Baltimore-based reader Marcus Hall already has a card based on their new design.

Christopher Hickey

Chris Hickey gave us a really fun request, based on a giveaway T-shirt that the Lehigh Valley Phantoms gave to fans more than 20 years ago.

Kary Klismet

Purpologist Kary Klismet has ordered many membership cards — including many purple cards — over the years. For his latest, he went with the L.A. team from the movie The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh and requested a vertical format to show how the jersey and shorts had mismatched shades of purple.

Gary A. Korhonen

First membership card for Gary Korhonen, whose card is based on the Italian soccer team ACF Fiorentina’s 2007-08 shirt design.

Brian Mabe

Brian Mabe is another membership first-timer. His card is based on his own beer league hockey jersey, which in turn is based on the L.A. Kings’ 2oo7-13 design.

Brent M. Nelson

Brent Nelson wanted a card based on the St. Louis Stallions, a prospective NFL expansion team that never got off the ground and whose uniforms were supposedly going to look like this. To my knowledge, there was never any official document that showed a rear view of the jerseys, but this unauthorized retail version seems like a reasonable postulation, so we matched that.

Eriks Nikurs

Some rear-jersey designs demand the vertical orientation, and the Coyotes’ Reverse Retro, which membership first-timer Eriks Nikurs chose, definitely falls into that category.

John Obermoller

It wouldn’t be Purple Amnesty day without at least one Vikings card, as chosen here by membership first-timer John Obermoller.

Andrew G. Patti

Reader Sam Patti has a long history of ordering purple cards. He got a Northwestern football design for himself in 2013, and then in 2024 he got Northwestern men’s hoops for his wife, Tina, and Rockies City Connect for his son, Eliot. His latest card, based on the Rockies new CC uni, is for his newborn son, Andrew.

Geoff Poole

Geoff Poole’s card is based on D3 school Wisconsin-Whitewater’s uniform from the 2009 Stagg Bowl.

Matthew Aaron Samilow

Matthew Samilow had previously ordered three membership cards, one of which was purple. This time around he went with the Jazz’s late-’90s design.

Frank J. Seitz Jr.

Longtime reader Frank Seitz has ordered several Baltimore-themed cards, dating back to 2008. His latest is based on the Ravens’ new look.

Britt Shoedel

And we wrap things up with the Purp Walk version of the “basic Uni Watch colors” motif, as requested by membership first-timer Britt Shoedel.

———

And there you have it. As always, you can see all the membership cards dating back to 2007 — now over 3,700 of them — here.

Okay, that’s more than enough purple for today! Back to blessedly non-purple content soon.

Subscribe now