The Crane Pool Forum

metirish wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2024 7:18 pm

Could be , might be ,might not be the one

• The dark gray of the jerseys — which feature “NYC” in big lettering on the front — represent the concrete that makes up the city’s sidewalks.

• The pinstripes on the jersey are, of course, a nod to the Mets’ pinstripes — but, on closer inspection, are composed of circles and diamonds. These represent the express and local trains of the New York City subway system.

• The circular sleeve patch is a take on the classic New York City subway token.

• The purple on the hat’s button, the jersey and the piping of the white pants is a reference to the 7 Line.

• An image of the Queensboro Bridge is stitched into the hat, under the interlocking NY. The bridge appears more subtly on the pants and sleeves as a cross section image.

• The sweatband inside the hat includes a multicolored take on the NYC subway map.

• The back of the jersey uses the team’s classic road font in the player’s name and number.

Perhaps because I’m the type of person who talks and tweets too much about baseball uniforms, the Mets offered me an in-person peek this week at their City Connects.

My (naturally subjective) verdict: the team and its partners at Nike have come up with a look that works on both a visceral and conceptual level.

In an MLB season defined by widely panned uniform changes, these are, simply put, nice to look at. Their debut will bring a burst of much-needed good news during an aesthetic down period for the sport, in which sweat stains, small names, and see-through pants have dominated discussion of apparel.

The gray tops and white pants with purple accents avoid potentially cringy City Connect traps like overly bold colors and monochromatic jerseys and pants.

The lettering on the back provides an antidote to the problem of undersized names that has emerged this year. That was caused by the decision to move the MLB logo down from the collar, where it occupies some of the space in which names once appeared.

The names on the Mets’ City Connect jerseys are the same height as on their typical 2024 uniforms. But because the road font is wide, those names appear larger and are easier to read — they are closer, then, to how big league names should pop on the back of a uniform.

Perhaps this can point a way forward league-wide as a workaround to the small-name problem.

The upshot: The Mets’ City Connects are different without being garish, edgy without trying too hard. It’s easy to imagine New Yorkers wanting to walk the streets wearing the hat and especially the jersey.

If players and fans react to these uniforms the way I did, they could move into a lasting place in the team’s rotation.

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: ↑Fri Apr 19, 2024 10:36 am It looks like the backs are nice. The bridge on the hat is a miss.

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: ↑Fri Apr 19, 2024 10:51 am I'm worried these might look super-dark on the field, like those Arizona unis of a few years back

Is this a terrible design? No. It’s probably better than most CC releases although that’s not saying much. More of a uniform, less of a costume. But like most CC designs, it doesn’t feel very well matched to the team — no blue, no orange. It looks more like a generic “NYC” jersey that a tourist would buy in Times Square, which I’m sure is exactly the point. This page even quotes the team’s chief marketing officer, Andy Goldberg, describing the jersey as looking “like something you’d wear on the street,” which was probably the guiding principle.

City Connect is a brand name for a line of alternate uniforms made by Nike, Inc. for Major League Baseball (MLB) teams. The uniforms feature different color schemes, typefaces, and graphic elements compared with the teams' typical home and away uniforms. The uniforms are designed to reflect the cultural aspects of each team's home city.[1] Of MLB's 30 teams, 20 have a City Connect uniform as of 2023, with an additional eight teams scheduled to debut theirs in 2024. The New York Yankees and Oakland Athletics are the only two teams without a City Connect uniform.