"Nike Was Innovating Something That Didn't Need To Be Innovated" - MLB Finally Got Off The Hill They Were Dying On With Their Terrible New Uniforms And Are Now Making Nike Change Everything
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We've covered the Nike/Fanatics MLB jersey crisis pretty extensively on this forum. Since the beginning of spring training the issues ranged from see through pants, jerseys not being sweat resistent, embarrassingly small lettering, and countless shipping delays to teams. It was yet another example of baseball getting in the way of itself and making all the wrong headlines.
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During this whole ordeal Michael Rubin and Fanatics were adamant that none of this was their fault despite being the ones actually making the uniforms. According to Fanatics, they were simply doing what they were told. Nike remained silent while Rob Manfred said, “I think after people wear them a little bit, they are going to be very popular.” Famous last words.
Well, we're a month into the season and the minds in power finally realized it's time to come down from the hill they were set dying on. Yesterday MLB announced that they're going back to the old ways and dialing back whatever the hell they put out in 2024. By this time next year they claim all problems will be fixed.
(ESPN) Major League Baseball plans to address its uniform fiasco after changes this spring to the standard jerseys and pants led to widespread complaints from players and fans, according to a memo obtained Sunday night by ESPN.
The prominent modifications include a return to larger lettering on the back of jerseys, remedying mismatched gray tops and bottoms and addressing the new Nike jerseys' propensity to collect sweat, according to the memo distributed to players by the MLB Players Association on Sunday. The changes, which will happen at the latest by the beginning of the 2025 season, will also include fixes to the pants, widely panned this spring for being see-through.
MLB made sure to tell their players that this was all Nike's fault and completely absolved Fanatics in their memo to the players.
"This has been entirely a Nike issue," the memo to players read. "At its core, what has happened here is that Nike was innovating something that didn't need to be innovated."
"We cautioned Nike against various changes when they previewed them in 2022, particularly regarding pants," the union memo read. "MLB had been, and has been, aware of our concerns as well. Unfortunately, until recently Nike's position has essentially boiled down to -- 'nothing to see here, Players will need to adjust.'"
Cooked them. Yeah we told those idiots to not do this in 2022, but they ignored our smart suggestion. Everyone yell at them. Ignore Manfred previously saying the "players will need to adjust" nonsense in the past, nope it's all Nike's fault.
At least changes are being made and they realize how bad they fucked up here. Allowing those egregious mistakes to keep happening while also paying them a BILLION DOLLARS simply could not continue to happen. The issues were funny for a bit, but you can't take yourself seriously as a sport when you've got your players rocking jerseys that are worse quality than ones I wore for my 13u travel team. Stop messing with my beautiful sport.