Ranking MLB’s City Connect Jerseys

It’s no secret that MLB desperately wants a younger demographic watching their games. Two years into Commissioner Rob Manfred’s tenure, the average age of a baseball viewer was 57. Deemed by The Guardian’s Les Carpenter in 2017 as a “number that is moving into early-bird buffet territory,” Major League Baseball focused on non-rule changes to allure a younger audience. 

In 2017, Manfred OK’d the idea to let players put custom nicknames on the backs of their jerseys. The novelty jerseys were used for one weekend of the season and discontinued in 2019. People credited MLB for trying to infuse youthful energy into the game, but this effort was essentially ineffective in keeping the younger viewers entertained. 

This season, MLB is again trying to make jerseys more fun but has gone about it in a much better way. They teamed up with Nike and came up with the idea of personalizing the jerseys around a team’s city instead of its players. The City Connect jerseys are representative of a city’s culture or history. They have been way more successful in relating to fans and have social media swirling with predictions of what may be included on each team’s jersey. 

With three jerseys officially announced and a fourth leaked via Twitter, let’s look at how some of these designs are a swing and miss while others are a homerun. 

Chicago Cubs

Oh, boy. When I saw Barstool Chicago leak this jersey on Twitter, I hoped they were wrong. The logo on the front says “Wrigleyville” across it with a color akin to a pack of Wrigley’s Winterfresh gum. While the Cubs claim on social media that this jersey represents all 77 of Chicago’s neighborhoods, Wrigleyville covers a three-block radius around Wrigley field, much more compact of an area than the whole Southside of Chicago. 

According to Lorenzo Reyes of USA Today, Wrigleyville isn’t technically one of the 77 neighborhoods in Chicago; it is considered a district within the neighborhood of Lakeview.

The color scheme also looks pretty generic. It’s very plain with nothing except the front logo to catch the eye. 

One patch on the left sleeve shows a vintage Y-shaped logo for Chicago, with symbolic stars on the Chicago city flag. It’s a nice little touch that brings at least one good feature to this jersey.

Overall this jersey is currently ranked as my worst because of the potential flaws in the design. I can understand using “Wrigleyville” on the front to avoid redundancy with the White Sox, but the selling point of this jersey is that it represents all of Chicago. Further than that, “Wrigleyville” barely represents northern Chicago, and that’s the area where the Cubs play. In my opinion, this jersey lacks in execution, and the MLB and Nike failed to make an eccentric design from a city with a rich and prolonged baseball history.

Boston Red Sox

This low ranking has nothing to do with sentiment. The Boston Red Sox swapped their classic red, white and navy blue for the gold and light blue colors to represent Patriots’ Day, commemorating the beginning of the Revolutionary War in 1775. The number 617 embroidered on the sleeve is Boston’s area code. That number is concealed in a patch resembling a racing bib, implying heavy undertones of the Boston Strong movement that followed the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. 

Beyond the symbolism, I’m not too fond of this design. While it is unique, there is an absence of flair that contrasts with the other jerseys on this list. The color scheme follows Boston’s city flag; however, the yellow ring on the flag’s crest is used as the primary color for the jersey. This creates a disconnect from the other jerseys used by pro sports teams in Boston. 

Across the four major sports, not one team from Boston uses either color from the City Connect design. Each of these teams usually uses the American flag as an influence — like the logo for the New England Revolution, which is a literal rendition of the American flag. And while these colors are similar to those of the University of California, Los Angeles, there is a disconnect even then.

Some of the other jerseys on this list have subtle connections to their current colors that tie the jersey together; this jersey lacks that. Without researching the hallmarks of the design’s meaning, this jersey makes no sense. 

Chicago White Sox

While Boston’s jersey lacked an enticing design, the Chicago White Sox’s Southside jerseys threw the kitchen sink at that concept. The pinstripe is clean, the color pops and the unique font is perfect experimentation for an alternate jersey.

The base of the jersey has a black and grey camo theme. From afar, the camo theme gives off an illusion that it is made from a shiny material, and I am all for that look. As more jerseys are revealed, it will be hard to move this jersey out of my top three best-looking jerseys. I wouldn’t mind if the ChiSox wore this uniform more often.

The problem comes with the sentiment behind this jersey. In a press release issued by the White Sox through MLB.com, they stated that the design represents “Chicago’s well-known Greystone architectural style.” They continue on to note that hip-hop and youth culture also had some influence on the design.

Those two influences are too general for what the City Connect jerseys are supposed to represent. The New York Mets have the New York skyline in their primary logo; it’s not a new concept to include that in a team’s apparel.

Hip-hop has also been used before as an influence on sports attire. During the 1980s, the NFL’s Oakland Raiders relocated back to Los Angeles and caught the eye of Ice Cube, a member of the famed hip-hop group N.W.A. Featured in the ESPN documentary “Straight Outta LA,” the group used the Raiders’ team apparel to help their brand gain notoriety. 

The White Sox’s City Connect jerseys use similar colors to the Raiders, and to me, the reason MLB hired Nike was to make a new and revolutionary jersey, not throwbacks to a foregone era.

I am confused about the symbolism because there is no specific connection they are referencing. The MLB City Connect page references 1991 — which was the first year Micheal Jordan won an NBA championship with the Chicago Bulls — but offered no clarity past that.

Miami Marlins

This jersey is the perfect mix of a fresh look, a connection to its city and not too far off from the current jersey design. An embroidered element on the sleeve commemorates the Havana Sugar Kings of the 1950s, an international team that sought to be the first MLB team outside of the United States. 

It delivers on connecting to the substantial Cuban population that resides in Miami, while not requiring extensive knowledge to understand the history of the patch. Red was the Sugar King’s primary color, and I think red is an excellent replacement for the Miami Marlins’ white jerseys. Red isn’t in the Marlins’ usual color scheme, but they did release orange alternatives, and this color isn’t that far off. 

So far, these are the stand-alone best City Connect jerseys. A clear purpose and a straightforward design were used for the Miami jerseys, whereas that concept may have been lost when creating the other two on this list.

While the Miami and Chicago jerseys will be hard to top, four jerseys will be released later this season — for the Chicago Cubs, the Arizona Diamondbacks, the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Regardless of how they compare to each other, this jersey concept is a win for baseball. 

These new jerseys bring with them the fresh anticipation of change to an old game that is trying to work its way back to young people. They are generating a legit hype around the game that hasn’t been seen in some time. The inclusion of Nike and the embracing of both new and original jersey designs help reconnect this game to the social media age.