Order is being restored following an MLB uniform controversy that was a major storyline in the 2024 season.
After new, Nike-designed uniforms with a more sheer and oft-derided look dominated last year’s spring training, team camps are opening this week with players finding largely a return to how uniforms were before 2024. Consistent with reforms first announced by the league last May, the changes for this year’s uniforms include:
- Larger numbers and letters for player names on jerseys
- Individualized tailoring on uniform pants, instead of placing players into one of four preset fits
- Heavier fabric for road uniforms, with home ones to follow in 2026
- Better wicking of sweat on road grays, as well as improved color matching of gray pants and jerseys
Before the shifts, the Nike Vapor Premier designs had a wide range of problems, including a see-through nature to the pants, the pooling of sweat on some players’ uniforms, names that were harder to read, and pants that ripped more easily after sliding on the base paths.
Solving a Problem
MLB and Nike initially defended the Vapor Premier design last year, touting the lightness and breathability and insisting that it would soon become widely favored across the league. Not only did that not happen, but the uniform issue quickly became a national punchline, including on late-night talk shows.
The situation quickly grew so fractious that Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin—whose company had been producing the Nike designs as essentially a subcontractor—said last year, “We’re doing everything as we’ve been told, and we’re getting the shit kicked out of us. So that’s not fun. [The] biggest thing I probably learned is if we’re involved in something, we need to make sure that everybody better be on board. … They got certain players on board, not all players on board.”
The MLB Players Association then applied additional pressure to help make the changes happen. Ultimately, the entire saga represented a somewhat rare instance across the sports industry in which mistakes were publicly acknowledged with little qualification and substantive corrections made.
MLB, meanwhile, is also returning this year to players wearing their own team uniforms in the All-Star Game, which had been done for more than 80 years before another widely criticized shift in 2019 to custom American and National League uniforms. That prior shift for the All-Star Game helped lead to the Vapor Premier design now being corrected.
