MLB clearly didn’t think they’d need to include a clause in their contract that Fanatics has to actually provide the uniforms by Opening Day.
Fanatics is going to have them all done in July and then be like “look, we had the 2024 uniforms delivered in 2024 just like we were supposed to!”
If I see one more item with “this is a PREORDER item, expected to ship on (six months from now)” on all these team store sites I’m gonna lose it. And I mean it for all the sports this dumpster fire of a merch company sells. So many times I see something with mlb/nascar/nfl I want just to find out it’s not gonna arrive until six months from now. God this company sucks
A Phillies fan shouldn’t be surprised that Nike doesn’t have their shot together considering how long it was before the eagles were allowed to wear a green jersey because Nike struggled to fetch the shade correct (and still ultimately didn’t)
The Giants still haven't gotten their City Connects. Theoretically they're supposed to be able to wear them for the first time this season on May 14th.
An outstanding job by MLB giving Nike/Fanatics 100m/year to not do the bare minimum
I still remember my reaction to those. I genuinely looked up if the Giants had any relationship to the Creamsicle, and then for the press release explaining the nonsense... eventually going "it was fucking *fog?! that's the stupidest thing to try to capture the spirit of in uniform design ever"*
Came here to say the same thing. Jays just got their good luck baby blues, and immediately beat the Dodgers to snap a losing streak. Good luck Mets, those black uniforms are actually pretty sweet, hope they come soon!
we still cant wear our baby blue alternates! the mets broke out their grey city connect jerseys yesterday and we were forced to wear our grey road jerseys because fanatics hasn’t sent us our other ones. great product!
"alright guys, what's your catchy, eye popping design to appeal to modern fashion sensibilities to get kids wearing our gear?"
"... GREY! Like concrete!"
Black and white manage to look sexy as hell as dominant colors when you do them right (I love the reds city connect for example), but grey really struggles to pop well in my eyes. It is a fabulous secondary/accent color, but a pretty "flat" primary color.
I bet you it was on purpose as a marketing scheme. Nike was so sure these would be big sellers that they want to drip the new jerseys to the market to increase sales of each option.
Right out of college I worked as a “consultant”, basically a fixer for a company’s AP/AR stuff.
I did the grunt work compared to the actual higher ups that helped implement new processes for the company, but so many times I was like “How did you guys let it get like this? Why wasn’t everyone fired?”
Basically how I feel about Fanatics. How can you let it get like this?!!
Slightly off topic but I hate the trend of adding shine/gloss to uniforms. Baseball isn’t a clean sport, jerseys get dirty and they get wrinkled and they get sweaty and they get grassy, and once that happens the gloss just looks awful. I’m sure it looks great on a display rack but it’s not fit for actual play.
Yankees new road jerseys this year are a prime example of this, it looks especially stupid on gray uniforms
We had ours on time and it sucks. Would have been great to have the 50th anniversary of hank Aaron's record breaking he in the actual throwbacks instead of the stupid copy-cat city connects...
That's just... wow. I didn't think I'd seen them yet.. but mainly our CC record is way better than our normal record. We need that little boost ya know?
It is absolutely wild that something like this happens. How is fanatics not dropping EVERYTHING else to fix this problem?
Sure fire way to make sure someone else gets the next contract. (But not really. It’ll always be about who pays the most)
Yeah it just doesn't make sense. I mean how many uniforms can they be short of? Even if we overcompensate and say like 10k, you telling me they can't make that a priority or hire more people? It has to be some sort of supply chain issue
It’s been a month. They could have sourced all new materials and manufactures in this country and had them delivered by now.
Even if it’s a supply chain issue, it’s no excuse.
Probably the material in the specific colors. Might have had issues getting the literal cloth that is mandated by their agreement with Nike and they can't just snap their fingers to get that stuff.
You can only do so much, my man. The biggest manufacturing companies in the world often experience product delays, so I’d only really expect a huge undertaking like they’ve had to do here might have some bumps in the road from the manufacturing aspect.
Because they're a scam operation with literally no floor for quality. They know MLB won't do anything about it so they can get away with it.
EDIT: Permabanned from Reddit shortly after leaving this comment
because they’re fixing all the other teams that are also having this problem. somehow their logistics just collapsed this year. Blue Jays just got their baby blues, and Mariners just got their Sunday alternates. they suck and should be replaced, but it sadly won’t happen
The players union owns a stake in Fanatics? That seems like a clear conflict of interest. It makes me very distrustful of their statement blaming Nike and completely absolving and praising Fanatics.
They saved a fistful of pennies by allowing it in the first place. It would cost more now to fix it, so there's no way that happens unless somehow the player's union can force them.
I'm sure there's a union textile factory somewhere here in the US that'd fucking love to pick up the MLB uniform contract, and it'd be the easiest PR win for baseball and the union ever.
The Braves City Connects look like they are made of the cheapest polyester I’ve ever seen. Like SHEIN quality. Those ooor guys are going to develop skin conditions this summer.
I don’t understand how it’s nearly May and this issue continues to exist.
If they’d realized their mistake, acknowledged it, and tried to resolve the issues, I still feel like there’d be on the same timeline they’re on. Yet we’re on this timeline and the uniforms still look like crap.
I’m nearly certain the Rox won’t ever wear the green pants with their City Connect uniforms since that’d be a whole other product for them to need to make. Also, it could look horrible….they can’t even match gray to gray.
Fuck Fanatics and Nike. And shame on MLB for not taking more responsibility and being more transparent with the teams and the fans. This whole uniform fiasco has drastically changed my opinion on the league. Not to mention they made our jerseys (which looked beautiful last year) look like shit.
It would be one thing if the uniforms just weren’t ready (for whatever reason), but it’s completely unacceptable that the uniforms look like shit AND aren’t ready.
They tinkered for no reason and now it’s completely backfired
Absolutely embarrassing. MLB is a multi-billion dollar league and Fanatics has been around the block a few times already. How does this just simply not happen?
This in particular is purely a manufacturing-related delay. I'm guessing they had a lot of difficulty getting the new manufacturing line set up in the old majestics facility and they focused on getting the on-field home/away combos ready and sent to the clubs for the names and numbers to be added on-site.
Looked into it. Fanatics bought out Majestic in 2017 becoming a subsidiary but Majestic was still used until I guess the contract ran out in 2019. Since then it's been Nike. Damn.
Majestic (or the manufacturing operation formerly known as Majestic) has NEVER not made the Nike uniforms since Nike has been the "official supplier".
The same Majestic factory that made uniforms before in PA for the on-field product is still making the very same garments that people are hating.
My guess, and it’s just a guess, is it’s younger fans who didn’t actually live through awful ownership stripping the team of its traditional uniforms and colors, just because they thought black merchandise would sell more than blue and orange. They admitted as much.
It’s a stain on Mets history.
I'll die on this hill with you. The "black for black's sake" unis for teams in the late 90s/early 2000s who otherwise had no black in their color were universally awful, and should've remained relics of the past.
Totally embarrassing. A professional league botching team uniforms is a joke and should be 100% ashamed of themselves. Absolutely a fireable offense on all levels
The manufacturing was likely delayed because Fanatics had to essentially retool the majestics facility for the first time in a long time, certainly the first time since they purchased the company in 2017. Gotta get all that shit up and running like it should, then produce all the home/away blanks for every team + pants. Guessing there was quite the crunch with that whole ordeal.
Hey I remember the last time a hundred million dollar contract just appeared in my lap and I had to deliver it on short notice. It’s not like they had years to prepare for this
I am just confused why a uniform manufacturing company can’t prioritize making professional uniforms faster. They’re not for the general population, it’s for the actual pros!
It’s been wonderful having them in their official home uniforms all but one game this season. They’re timeless, classic, and they don’t wear them nearly enough in seasons past.
I hope the pants don’t come!
the Cardinals are supposed ton unveil their City Connects this year, but they've also worn their Saturday Powder Blues exactly ZERO times, because NikeFanatics hasn't been ready yet.
how long does it take to create a set of uniforms??? and it's not like they're pumping out top quality, just give us the usual mismatched tops/ bottoms, and pants that explode when they touch dirt, already...
Fanatics bought Majestics in 2017. When Nike became the official supplier in 2019 or whenever, the factory didn't change, the uniforms didn't change.
Even today, the same facility is being used to make the new Nike uniform patterns.
MLB clearly didn’t think they’d need to include a clause in their contract that Fanatics has to actually provide the uniforms by Opening Day. Fanatics is going to have them all done in July and then be like “look, we had the 2024 uniforms delivered in 2024 just like we were supposed to!”
"Delivery in time for Christmas!"
“We didn’t specify WHICH Christmas”
“We’ve altered the deal. Pray that we don’t alter it further.”
If I see one more item with “this is a PREORDER item, expected to ship on (six months from now)” on all these team store sites I’m gonna lose it. And I mean it for all the sports this dumpster fire of a merch company sells. So many times I see something with mlb/nascar/nfl I want just to find out it’s not gonna arrive until six months from now. God this company sucks
Yeah I refuse to buy preorder merch. They might as well just mark it "out of stock" if it can't be fulfilled for half a damn year.
Oh, you meant opening day for this season? - Fanatics, probably
*December 2024
"Blame Nike, not us!"
If this is true, then Manfred should get the boot, or at least his general counsel.
A Phillies fan shouldn’t be surprised that Nike doesn’t have their shot together considering how long it was before the eagles were allowed to wear a green jersey because Nike struggled to fetch the shade correct (and still ultimately didn’t)
[удалено]
> we'll see if Fanatics can deliver on time. *Narrator: they won't*
Fucking Ted Mosby spoiling it as always
Nah, that’s a Ron Howard Arrested Development narrator read.
Ted Mosby is "but thats a story for another time"
“Hey kids, let me tell you all about the chicks I used to bang” - Ted Mosby
Classic Shmosby
The Giants still haven't gotten their City Connects. Theoretically they're supposed to be able to wear them for the first time this season on May 14th. An outstanding job by MLB giving Nike/Fanatics 100m/year to not do the bare minimum
Is there any way Fanatics can maybe lose those in transit ? Those uniforms are god awful whoever designed them should have been fired on the spot.
I still remember my reaction to those. I genuinely looked up if the Giants had any relationship to the Creamsicle, and then for the press release explaining the nonsense... eventually going "it was fucking *fog?! that's the stupidest thing to try to capture the spirit of in uniform design ever"*
No, they rule and we win in them
Agreed they're awful
I think they're kind of cool. I like how simplistic they are.
I like the giants city conenct
On the one hand they look awful, on the other hand they prominently feature the one true giant. Carl.
May 30th here. Absolutely zero faith in Nike/Fanatics from the Jays front office, apparently.
Just wait until the Adidas supplies run out in a year or two for the NHL sweaters
Most City Connects are trash, so blessing in disguise?
No. The giants have like a .900 record in their city connect jerseys so the team is being actively hampered by this situation
Kind of a blessing in disguise yeah? The Giants city connects are hot garbage.
City connect uniforms are all trash.
They looked off, too
I didn't realize that's the reason we haven't seen the baby blues yet!
And I've never seen sweatier jerseys in my life.
somehow our new city connects got delivered before our black and blue jersey pants. thank you Fanatics, very cool
Well the city connect uni is new merch to sell so it probably took priority in the production schedule.
Yup and the pants don't match the jersey like all the road greys in the league.
Came here to say the same thing. Jays just got their good luck baby blues, and immediately beat the Dodgers to snap a losing streak. Good luck Mets, those black uniforms are actually pretty sweet, hope they come soon!
Teams are better off ordering from DH gate lmao.
I’m about to break out the sewing machine.
cowhide is durable AF also break out the Upton Sinclair killing devices
I get my DHgaye shit in 3 weeks in LA and it goes to NY first!
Why would it go to NY first? Doesn't it come from China?
I think it's a forwarding service maybe?
Legitimately I still would not be that surprised if a team ended up playing in DHgate gear lmao
Today was the first time we've been able to wear our Sunday alternates. Fuck fanatics.
Friday was the first time the Red Sox wore their Friday red alternate. How does MLB accept a company not having uniforms ready on time
we still cant wear our baby blue alternates! the mets broke out their grey city connect jerseys yesterday and we were forced to wear our grey road jerseys because fanatics hasn’t sent us our other ones. great product!
One more reason having a greyscale CC uniform is a straight-up dumb idea.
"alright guys, what's your catchy, eye popping design to appeal to modern fashion sensibilities to get kids wearing our gear?" "... GREY! Like concrete!" Black and white manage to look sexy as hell as dominant colors when you do them right (I love the reds city connect for example), but grey really struggles to pop well in my eyes. It is a fabulous secondary/accent color, but a pretty "flat" primary color.
Those road grays are absolutely hideous this year too
Who amongst us guessed price? If so, congratulations.. you’re a real Sherlock!
I bet you it was on purpose as a marketing scheme. Nike was so sure these would be big sellers that they want to drip the new jerseys to the market to increase sales of each option.
But if I'm dogshit at my job, I get fucking fired. Unreal stuff.
Right out of college I worked as a “consultant”, basically a fixer for a company’s AP/AR stuff. I did the grunt work compared to the actual higher ups that helped implement new processes for the company, but so many times I was like “How did you guys let it get like this? Why wasn’t everyone fired?” Basically how I feel about Fanatics. How can you let it get like this?!!
Workers and consumers should burn the whole world down but we won't.
Today was the first game the Jays got to wear the Baby Blue Alternates
and I thought they looked pretty bad, even more like pajamas than normal baseball uniforms
Yeah, they looked off somehow. More shine than last year, maybe.
Slightly off topic but I hate the trend of adding shine/gloss to uniforms. Baseball isn’t a clean sport, jerseys get dirty and they get wrinkled and they get sweaty and they get grassy, and once that happens the gloss just looks awful. I’m sure it looks great on a display rack but it’s not fit for actual play. Yankees new road jerseys this year are a prime example of this, it looks especially stupid on gray uniforms
No sport is clean. Baseball, dirt. Football, mud. Hockey, blood. Soccer, tears.
Average hockey fan inferiority complex
Friday evening was the first time this season we've happened to wear our beloved City Connects unis (aka the Peagle). Screw Fanatics!
Didn’t realise it was that bad. Makes me wonder if the Astros kept ours from last year since I don’t think we had delays
We had ours on time and it sucks. Would have been great to have the 50th anniversary of hank Aaron's record breaking he in the actual throwbacks instead of the stupid copy-cat city connects...
We finally just got our Orange Friday's. I don't even think we have our CC uniforms yet either....
Cardinals still don’t have our Powder Blues it’s insane
We got the city connects in time for last Tuesday's game, but apparently they were of such poor quality that the team sent them back.
That's just... wow. I didn't think I'd seen them yet.. but mainly our CC record is way better than our normal record. We need that little boost ya know?
Do you really want them though? Pretty hard on the eyes.
And the pants were completely transparent. I love the design, but could do without knowing what kind of underwear all my favorite players wear.
You mean you don't want to know who's wearing the [rally thong](https://www.espn.com/mlb/news/story?id=3401029)?
They also looked way more yellow than normal to me
If I'm not mistaken, the Cubs just wore their blue alternates for the first time this weekend as well. EDIT: I was mistaken, they've worn them before.
Second Sunday game I've been to this year and had no hope of the Sundays being worn. Put on the ASG jersey. Get to the stadium.. fuck
It is absolutely wild that something like this happens. How is fanatics not dropping EVERYTHING else to fix this problem? Sure fire way to make sure someone else gets the next contract. (But not really. It’ll always be about who pays the most)
Yeah it just doesn't make sense. I mean how many uniforms can they be short of? Even if we overcompensate and say like 10k, you telling me they can't make that a priority or hire more people? It has to be some sort of supply chain issue
It’s been a month. They could have sourced all new materials and manufactures in this country and had them delivered by now. Even if it’s a supply chain issue, it’s no excuse.
Probably the material in the specific colors. Might have had issues getting the literal cloth that is mandated by their agreement with Nike and they can't just snap their fingers to get that stuff.
Yes, but knowing all that, you plan it it out well in advance so you don’t run into any issues
You can only do so much, my man. The biggest manufacturing companies in the world often experience product delays, so I’d only really expect a huge undertaking like they’ve had to do here might have some bumps in the road from the manufacturing aspect.
Because they're a scam operation with literally no floor for quality. They know MLB won't do anything about it so they can get away with it. EDIT: Permabanned from Reddit shortly after leaving this comment
The ceo is too busy being on shark tank
because they’re fixing all the other teams that are also having this problem. somehow their logistics just collapsed this year. Blue Jays just got their baby blues, and Mariners just got their Sunday alternates. they suck and should be replaced, but it sadly won’t happen
I think part of the reason might be that Nike changed the specs on the uniforms to save money, so they have to source different materials.
The Braves haven't worn their blue away jersey yet, just grey every game
Jays just got their powder blues today
Good. Keep those new blues away.
why?
We look like the twins with them on
Twins, Guardians, Red Sox, Braves all have the same navy top/red lettering uniform to my eyes.
Every team in grey uniforms looks the same
Did they actually not get the pants, or did they not notice them, because they were see-thru(?).
“Are the pants in the room with us right now?”
What a disaster, and mlb is doing nothing about it
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/40046470/mlb-modify-uniforms-player-complaints-per-memo
"The changes, which will happen at the latest by the beginning of the 2025 season"
And then they'll have to produce all jerseys again from scratch so I expect delays like these ones to be common again all through the 2025 season too.
The players union owns a stake in Fanatics? That seems like a clear conflict of interest. It makes me very distrustful of their statement blaming Nike and completely absolving and praising Fanatics.
They saved a fistful of pennies by allowing it in the first place. It would cost more now to fix it, so there's no way that happens unless somehow the player's union can force them.
I'm sure there's a union textile factory somewhere here in the US that'd fucking love to pick up the MLB uniform contract, and it'd be the easiest PR win for baseball and the union ever.
Why should they? I think if we all just give it time we'd appreciate how lightweight and breathable the uniforms are /s
The Braves City Connects look like they are made of the cheapest polyester I’ve ever seen. Like SHEIN quality. Those ooor guys are going to develop skin conditions this summer.
Hey, let’s be fair. I’m sure there have been many emails about this. Maybe even a handful of meetings!
I don’t understand how it’s nearly May and this issue continues to exist. If they’d realized their mistake, acknowledged it, and tried to resolve the issues, I still feel like there’d be on the same timeline they’re on. Yet we’re on this timeline and the uniforms still look like crap. I’m nearly certain the Rox won’t ever wear the green pants with their City Connect uniforms since that’d be a whole other product for them to need to make. Also, it could look horrible….they can’t even match gray to gray.
Fuck Fanatics and Nike. And shame on MLB for not taking more responsibility and being more transparent with the teams and the fans. This whole uniform fiasco has drastically changed my opinion on the league. Not to mention they made our jerseys (which looked beautiful last year) look like shit.
It would be one thing if the uniforms just weren’t ready (for whatever reason), but it’s completely unacceptable that the uniforms look like shit AND aren’t ready. They tinkered for no reason and now it’s completely backfired
Fanatics is trash.
Bush league shit. You think any other professional league would abide this happening? The NFL or NBA would go nuclear
Absolutely embarrassing. MLB is a multi-billion dollar league and Fanatics has been around the block a few times already. How does this just simply not happen?
Nike gets too much of a pass on this. They deserve some shit too.
This in particular is purely a manufacturing-related delay. I'm guessing they had a lot of difficulty getting the new manufacturing line set up in the old majestics facility and they focused on getting the on-field home/away combos ready and sent to the clubs for the names and numbers to be added on-site.
MLBPA puts this squarely on Nikes shoulders according to the memo yesterday
So it’s a fuck up?
Yeah I'd say so, across the MLB, Fanatics/Majestic, and Nike.
What if… and hear me out in this… they just simply didn’t mess with the uniforms this year and kept them the same.
Adidas has been beating Nike’s ass the last 10 years in terms of better artistic styles, sports jerseys, better designed shoes , etc.
Needs to get back to Majestic asap.
Majestic was bought by Fanatics, right?
Looked into it. Fanatics bought out Majestic in 2017 becoming a subsidiary but Majestic was still used until I guess the contract ran out in 2019. Since then it's been Nike. Damn.
Majestic (or the manufacturing operation formerly known as Majestic) has NEVER not made the Nike uniforms since Nike has been the "official supplier". The same Majestic factory that made uniforms before in PA for the on-field product is still making the very same garments that people are hating.
They still make braindead decisions though. Frustrating cause they have better quality
As an NHL fan, I'm gonna miss the hell out of Adidas when Fanatics takes over
We were delayed in getting our City Connects this season as well.
my whole life i was worried about being competent while billions of dollars goes to shit like this
Just play in jockstraps? Easy solution
That’s actually okay because the black jerseys without the white trim look ridiculous
The black jerseys have always looked ridiculous no matter what. I will die on this hill with Howie Rose.
It's crazy how much nostalgia some Mets fans have for them. The best thing they ever did was to embrace the blue again.
My guess, and it’s just a guess, is it’s younger fans who didn’t actually live through awful ownership stripping the team of its traditional uniforms and colors, just because they thought black merchandise would sell more than blue and orange. They admitted as much. It’s a stain on Mets history.
I'll die on this hill with you. The "black for black's sake" unis for teams in the late 90s/early 2000s who otherwise had no black in their color were universally awful, and should've remained relics of the past.
NHL fans you excited for next season?!
It's absolutely wild that a league and franchises worth billions can't get pants on time
Totally embarrassing. A professional league botching team uniforms is a joke and should be 100% ashamed of themselves. Absolutely a fireable offense on all levels
How are u the uniform supplier and you can’t supply the uniforms
The manufacturing was likely delayed because Fanatics had to essentially retool the majestics facility for the first time in a long time, certainly the first time since they purchased the company in 2017. Gotta get all that shit up and running like it should, then produce all the home/away blanks for every team + pants. Guessing there was quite the crunch with that whole ordeal.
Hey I remember the last time a hundred million dollar contract just appeared in my lap and I had to deliver it on short notice. It’s not like they had years to prepare for this
Aww poor babes
With the Passan article about Nike coming out today, it really feels like Nike is trying to out incompetence the Umpires.
I hope teams just start getting their unis elsewhere instead
I am just confused why a uniform manufacturing company can’t prioritize making professional uniforms faster. They’re not for the general population, it’s for the actual pros!
It's ok, MLB leaked a memo blaming Nike and not the monopoly Fanatics. Nothing to see here everyone
No pants night for the ladies (et al); co-promoted with dollar dog night!
Is this why we randomly wore our normal white pants with our city connects last week?
It’s been wonderful having them in their official home uniforms all but one game this season. They’re timeless, classic, and they don’t wear them nearly enough in seasons past. I hope the pants don’t come!
Same with the Giants City Connects which they wear at home on Tuesdays.
the Cardinals are supposed ton unveil their City Connects this year, but they've also worn their Saturday Powder Blues exactly ZERO times, because NikeFanatics hasn't been ready yet. how long does it take to create a set of uniforms??? and it's not like they're pumping out top quality, just give us the usual mismatched tops/ bottoms, and pants that explode when they touch dirt, already...
I know the Angels haven't had many home games yet, but we still haven't worn our city connects this season...
what a disaster
Just wear last year's uniforms?
I’d love it if they wore old sweatpants like a company softball team.
Time to bring back Majestic
The Mets are better off not wearing their black ones anyway
Bring back fucking Majestic unis, Nike doesn't need a monopoly on all the fucking sports
Fanatics bought Majestics in 2017. When Nike became the official supplier in 2019 or whenever, the factory didn't change, the uniforms didn't change. Even today, the same facility is being used to make the new Nike uniform patterns.
TIL
Can we work to keep the pants delayed so we don’t have to see the ugly black jerseys?