Major League Baseball started its season with conversations revolving around its uniforms and is ending it by reversing two of the most hated changes it made to them.
MLB announced Monday it will return to having players wear their home and road uniforms during the league’s annual All-Star Game in 2025, which was the custom from 1930 to 2019.
Additionally, the size of lettering and numbers on jerseys will return to the larger size used in prior seasons, something requested by the players. While the decision to make these changes was previously agreed upon, it was only recently finalized by MLB, the players’ association, Nike, and Fanatics, which produces uniforms for MLB. Both MLB and its players association are investors in Fanatics.
The changes will start during the 2025 season and will be fully implemented by the 2026 season due to “production timelines,” a story on the league’s website said. The road gray uniforms teams wear in the regular season will be completed in time for spring training, MLB said, and look like the ones used in the 2023 season, with enlarged letters and numbers.
Uniforms dominated the talk of spring training and into the regular season as both Nike and Fanatics took heat for the jerseys that easily got drenched in sweat, had smaller font sizes, and were made with lighter material than in years past in what Nike called its Vapor Premier jersey. (Nike said the material was a more breathable and lightweight fabric.)
“Everyone hates them,” Phillies shortstop Trea Turner said during spring training.
“This has been entirely a Nike issue,” an April memo from the MLBPA read. “At its core, what has happened here is that Nike was innovating something that didn’t need to be innovated.”
MLB didn’t have an All-Star Game in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, the league switched to players wearing standardized jerseys instead of their “hometown” team uniforms, which was another decision many players disliked. At July’s All-Star Game, Phillies star Bryce Harper told the Los Angeles Times he remembered watching players in their team uniforms as a kid, and he expressed his desire for the league to switch back.
“If we could change back to that,” Harper said, “I think it would be really cool.”
Two months later, Harper got his wish.
