I may never watch another Major League Baseball game again.
No, it isn’t because I have a problem with MLB’s decision to move the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Colorado due to Georgia’s restrictive and backward voting laws. That’s a decision I applaud.
You’d be closer in guessing that it’s because of the continued migration away from the game’s traditional rules. Gimmicks like starting extra innings with a runner on second base aren’t what the sport was founded on, but I would be lying if I said that has kept me away from the television set.
However, when the Boston Red Sox, MLB and Nike announced on Tuesday morning that the Sox would be the first of seven teams to wear a special uniform that carries the design inspired by the city rather than the team’s branding this season, they lost me.
The problem isn’t with the uniform itself. The Red Sox, in being the first team to unveil their “City Connect” uniform, will wear a set that accomplishes its goal of paying homage to the Boston Marathon and what it represents to the city. The uniform, largely yellow with light blue font and accents, looks just fine.
But therein lies the problem. The Boston Red Sox already has an identity — one of the most distinct and easily recognizable in sports. It’s a strong identity and one that the city of Boston has rallied around for decades.
Now, that identity has been muddled by a random uniform set that is thinly connected to anything the team has stood for over the course of its existence.
Yes, the Red Sox and the Boston Marathon stand next to each other in the Boston sporting scene, especially after the emotions of the 2013 bombing. Back then, the ‘Sox wore a slightly modified version of their home set to commemorate their first game back at Fenway Park in the aftermath of the tragedy. It was justified then.
Eight years later, they’ve delved into mindless consumerism.
I use the Red Sox as a case study, but this trend has plagued other leagues, too. All 30 NBA teams have rotated through city-inspired uniforms like clockwork over the past several seasons, wearing a uniform that often has nothing to do with anything for a season before packing it up and shuffling in another thinly-veiled design.
There’s no cohesion and no method to any of this madness. Sometimes, a cause emerges that can justify a team stepping away from its roots; the Atlanta Hawks’ uniforms paying homage to Martin Luther King, Jr. are an example of this. Most times, though, you’ll wind up with the Dallas Mavericks in gold or the Milwaukee Bucks wearing blue for no good reason.
It’s a departure from a small part of what makes the American sporting landscape so great. With the exception of Major League Soccer, teams in the United States held out against outside advertising and manufacturing influences until the middle part of the last decade.
Until then, there were no advertisements on the uniforms, and the uniform options that a given team had available were limited to a home set, a road set and one or two alternate uniforms that fit in with the overall theme of the team. Now, it’s the Wild West with teams having all sorts of meaningless options.
NBA teams are advertising on their uniforms and the NHL has indicated that advertising on helmets is likely to continue beyond the pandemic. What will stop baseball and football from getting in on that action in the next several years?
Teams didn’t always need these gimmicks to keep fans engaged. I would’ve thought the fans of Boston, Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles were smart enough to know their team stood for their city without being asked to go spend hundreds of dollars on a brand new jersey that will be worn a handful of times each season.
Here’s hoping I don’t see much yellow the next time I catch the Red Sox on TV.
