It’s Dec. 30, the height of the free agency period has come and gone, save for a handful of high-end Scott Boras clients still looking for a home, and we are all fattened up on egg nog and cookies.
What better time to delve into something light? Something that won’t weigh us down like holiday meals or two feet of snow. With that in mind, we ask, which team has the best uniforms in baseball?
The common conception throughout sports is that the older the uniform’s theme, the more classic and more liked it is. That is certainly a factor in our rankings of the top five current uniforms:
1. New York Yankees
Sorry, Red Sox fans, but it’s true. The pinstripes and the interlocking NY are as iconic as they come, and have remained roughly the same in dimension and color for decades. There have been minor variations in thickness of the stripes and the style of the NY, but it persists as the signature jersey, perhaps in all of sports. You can head to the toilet now.
2. San Francisco Giants
Although they moved to California from New York over 50 years ago, the Giants have been rather consistent in their garb since before then. They have sported the black-and-orange theme since 1949, and the “Giants” across the chest, a look they re-adopted in 2000, has been in play in a virtually identical script off and on since the 1920s. A good uniform should instantly conjure up images from the past, and if you don’t see a young Willie Mays, when you look at that jersey, you are in need of some Ken Burns or something like that.
3. Los Angeles Dodgers
Just like the Giants, the Dodgers’ move west did little to destroy their tradition, at least in what they wear. The script has been unchanged since 1939, when the Brooklyn Dodgers abandoned their place name for their team name. And when it comes to coloring, no team is more synonymous with theirs than those sporting “Dodger Blue.”
4. Detroit Tigers
The Tiger snaking his way through the Old English “D” leaves something to be desired, but when the kitty is gone, that letter on its own is as synonymous with a team as any is in all of professional sports. From Ty Cobb to Al Kaline to others who have sported the jersey, it implies much of what the city is all about — simplicity, hard work, style.
The current road jerseys are just OK, but anytime they break out the home classics, few teams look any better.
5. Boston Red Sox
There have been a few too many alterations to the road look over the years and way too many new “alternative” looks, but like Detroit, the home unis, when not messed with, are virtually untouchable. Give me a clean white home uni with no name on the back, a red “B” on a blue cap, and you have a good reason to get excited.
Honorable mention: Pittsburgh, St. Louis and this.
Which team has the best uniforms in baseball? Leave your comments below.
On deck: Do traditional statistics matter anymore in baseball?
