We know that the Phillies will be getting a City Connect uniform this year, and we know that it will be blue and yellow — the colors of the Philadelphia city flag. Now a jersey fitting that description has surfaced on eBay.
I have not been able to independently verify the legitimacy of this one. But I’ll note that all recent purported leaks based on photos of actual jerseys (as opposed to mock-ups) have turned out to be legit.
Here are some additional photos:
From a design standpoint, I think it’s pretty awful (and made even worse by the splitting of the “I” on the chest mark).
No sign of the pants or cap, but I imagine those will be surfacing soon enough.
Along with the new Nats roadie, splitting I’s is out of hand in a tiny sample size! Also no sun collar in this replica.
That looks like what you’d buy as a gas station bootleg
Perfect description. What a reach by Nike, ugh
Awful, I hate it so much. Can’t wait to hear what kind of storytelling nonsense they try and put on here.
Basically a blank slate to try something new, and THIS is what you roll out? Unbelievable.
That sleeve batch is terrible. It looks like it says “Philadelphia – City of Brotherly” with no connection to the “word” in the middle. Making it even worse is the custom font, that has some story behind it I’m sure, that makes it look like the V is a U.
Also, is it me or has the practice of replacing an O with some random object in a word gone too far? I remember the tourist shirts from NYC with the apple when I was a kid, but now I feel like everyone tries to do and they never look good.
I live in Vegas, and people here use the VGK logo for an “O” all the time. It’s especially stupid because the VGK logo features a large “V.” HVME is just dumb. But when thenly use it in “Love,” a word that actually features a “V” it just makes our fan base look even worse. I don’t LVVE it at all.
I live in Texas. Its astonishing how many people substitute a star in for the X in Texas, when a star looks like an A not an X. So it ends up looking like TEAAS. Drives me nuts!
The star for the A makes so much more sense.
They really didn’t think it through. It’s a leap to think people will read the bottom and then finish it at the center. If they’d flipped the text so “City of Brotherly” was above the “LOVE” (and the latter was actually rendered straight across, whatever weird typography aside), then it’d make a little bit of sense.
Also, that font is just ugly.
Good grief.
Took me a second to realize it’s a “V” and not a “U” on that sleeve patch. Uff da.
L-BELL-UE has been the city slogan for centuries!
L-BELL-UE, too!
I Loue Phiilly
As a Mets fan, I love that this is so awful. But then I realize how bad the Mets CC jersey is going to be too.
Wow, that is awful, I live in the Philly region, cannot really see this being too popular. Not sure how it “connects” to the city other than the flag colors. It has a poorly designed brotherly love patch, and the font looks familiar-ish but not iconic enough for me to know what it is on first sight, plus it is just ugly.
Given the strength of their standard home and away, and beautiful cream and powder blue alts, hopefully this only shows up for the minimum Nike required games and disappears.
Very disappointing the team signed off on this, a team with such a great uniform identity, and one that they have kept pretty well intact amid the countless run of softball tops across baseball the last 2+ decades.
Fellow local, and I would argue these aren’t even the city colors. The flag is based on the Swedish flag. The blue here is a gradient that is mostly darker than the Swedish flag, and the yellow is more of a highlighter. So the one thing they were going for, they missed. A Germanic black letter font would work well in Cincinnati or Milwaukee but not Philadelphia.
Ebay has been leaking lots as unreleased merch this week, who has the access to this stuff!?!?!
2024 SD batting practice cap
2024 NY Mets road jersey
Now new philly connect
Yikes! I generally enjoy when our teams use the blue and yellow of the City flag, but this design is pretty horrible. Both the font and gradient are atrocious!
They’re getting rid of the red jersey for this? God Nike sucks so badly. Philly should have just called their powder blues their “City Connect.” Way more of a history in that shirt, and their uniform set last season was perfect for them.
I’d really rather the 4+1 rule mean up to 4 regulars plus a throwback. These City uniforms are mostly awful.
Tend to agree on the stupid 4+1 especially because part of the charm in baseball is the pastoral nature of the game, so having a throwback (be it to that franchise or a Negro League franchise in the region) makes sense. My preference would be every team has a home white, road gray, one day game alternate, and one throwback.
Wow, this is garbage. Naturally, they’re going to pair it with black pants.
As a Phillies fan, I’m beyond offended. This is disguting.
Philly radio is gonna have a field day.
I live, laugh, love this jersey. Can’t wait to rep my city. #GOPHILLS
City Girls Connect <3
This is the kind of choogie bs that ruins baseball. What’s next? “It’s Fall Y’all!” Jerseys for playoff baseball!?
Honestly, I don’t know what to make of this. My thinking is that they’ll spin the lettering to represent the Constitution, which has a font only vaguely similar to this.
Looks too much like the Philadelphia Union kit.
Spectacularly bad!
The city street signs were just sitting there…ripe for the design’s picking…but sadly they are rotting on the proverbial Vine (and Broad, and Pattison, and Frankford, and Cottman).
Can’t wait to read the story-telling on this one -can’t say I recognize the font or its’ significance.
If you squint real hard and youse, err…use your imagination, the font harkens back to this:
link
Another opportunity wasted!
These CC uniforms get more and more embarrassing with each reveal. I am so dreading what the Cardinals’ gear is going to look like.
It is amazing with all the spectacular fan designed concepts you see on the interwebs, that Nike consistently puts out stuff that is so bad, it almost seems intentional. I feel like there are only three possibilities at this point:
1. Nike’s creative staff is just completely incompetent.
2. They have some sort of corporate mandated matrix of things each uniform must include, and the needs of the dumb checkboxes in that matrix always spit out awful designs.
3. They intentionally make bad designs for some nefarious reason.
DeWitt already ruined the uniform last year with pathetic Stifel. So whatever they get this year can’t look any worse than what they already wear.
Questions:
* Does the team ownership have final approval responsibility for these pathetic Nike creations?
* What is the estimated (average) revenue the teams receive from the City Connect program?
For the Phillies case, remember the immense response The fans asserted for Trey Turner last season. Imagine what that could achieve with a focus on boycotting Nike’s latest design disaster.
1) Yes.
2) That data is not public.
You know, I get the marketing strategy by Nike on designing all these alternate uniforms. But could their designers take some initiative and look at past/present unis i.e. styles, colors etc. and then look at modern uni templates and actually design them to be aesthetically good at a minimum. I get they want to push boundaries but for the most part you can enhance a once popular style and probably get more out of it than some of these horrendous re-imagined cluster F’s they’ve been releasing. To me it seems they swing and miss way more than actually hitting a home run.
No Ticker today? It’s about 45 minutes later than it normally posts, and my withdrawal symptoms are kicking in already.
Shit — I edited it but forgot to publish it. Thanks for the poke! Now published.
Thanks for the fix! (And the fix!)
We got rid of our red jerseys for this crap? Nicky is out of hand, man.
We got rid of our red jerseys for this crap? Nike is out of hand, man.
Wow. $175 for that crap?? Or is that how much Nike would pay me to wear it? If so, I’ll need a lot more than that.
Do we have any idea when the Philly CC is supposed to be debuted? (Based on past unveilings, it would be officially released about a week prior to it being worn.)
I have not heard anything about their unveiling or on-field debut dates.
Dang, worst CC jersey yet! I don’t see how you slide such nonsense in with such a classic ballclubs uniform set. Brutal.
These are disgusting. And so much worse than expected.
Is it a lack of effort, or trying too hard? Either way I hope these are worn as infrequently as possible.
Have to totally agree with Alex C. Phillies are giving up a decent jersey for this???? Please may it die on the clearance rack.
Slow pitch softball teams even think those jerseys are awful
Awful. Should have at least made this monstrosity a pullover style.
Awful jersey, just like the rest of the terrible City Connect jerseys
The only good one is the Washington Nationals.
Nike has done such a terrible job since they took over the MLB uniforms. They started immediately by putting their logo above the team logo. I do not want “Nike presents: The Phillies”
Count me as the one person who kinda digs it. Could do without the gradient but I love the incorporation of the Philly flag.
I’m not totally against this. The fonts are iffy but I assume a yellow hat and pants with blue socks would make this a decent look. I am not a fan of the numbers though. Too imbalanced.
“From a design standpoint, I think it’s pretty awful…”
This more than anything should tell us it is probably legit.
Pure GARBAGE. Don’t worry, they did the gradient just so they can add black pants too. I can’t believe they actually think this A. looks good and B. tells a story. I hate everything about it.
Are there any Philly fans or residents who can perhaps shed some light on how these elements “connect” to the City? I think CheisH mentioned above the font is somewhat reminiscent of the Schmidts beer logo (I was thinking it’s *supposed* to evoke the “we the people” font of the US Constitution link.)
Any other keys? Yes they got the Liberty Bell in that “LOVE” patch.
Any thoughts on what the wavy gray lines in the “Philly” wordmark represent?
The only thing I’m thinking of is the waves in gray represent the rivers that border and flow through the city?
As a Philly resident and fan (ticket plan holder, too, and I’m going to find out what I can about why they went with this if it’s real!) the only thing I can think of for the font is like you said – the US Constitution font.
The “LOVE” is of course for the LOVE Park in Center City, but the Liberty Bell subbing for the askew “O” on the sculpture.
I’ve been looking at it for a while and can’t think of much else to key from the city!
I’m with you on the wavy lines possibly repp’ing the Delaware and Schuylkill, but not sold on the notion that this font is some/any sort of riff on the US Constitution font. If so, it’s shameful.
There’s “LOVE” sculptures all over the globe…yes there’s a park downtown, but why’d they use that as a Philly-specific element (and a poorly executed one at that)? And The Liberty Bell is so boilerplate.
I hoping to have an ‘a-ha’ moment when the explainer is released…for now I’m still enjoying this morning’s ‘ha-ha’ moment.
Rangers fan here. The explanation of the local elements completely changed our perception of the City Connect. once they told us what the Peagle was and why these design elements were present, we all fell in love with it, but hated it when it was just the leak
South Jersey resident, went to college in Philly, go to loads of events in the city. The obvious flag and brotherly love parts are in there. The font definitely is familiar and could be from a number of things that have been mentioned, but it isn’t specific enough to something in the city culture to be an obvious connection you know as soon as you see it. I couldn’t tell you what the design inside the font is for, but they will have some sort of nonsense explanation for it.
In general it is just a jersey with the city flag colors and it says brotherly love on it. It feels lazy because there are plenty of random design elements around the city they could have actually used. Not that I am a fan of that sort of storytelling nonsense, but this feels especially lazy.
My assumption is the target demographic to buy this garbage is the same one that buys the shirts that say “ill” in Phillies script.
If you inspect the City of Philadelphia seal (shown on the City’s flag), the bottom of the shield depicts a ship in water (Delaware River) represented by a series of wavy lines. Best guess this is the pathetic explanation we will see.
Imagine if they play the Red Sox and both teams are wearing their CC uniforms! Heinous!
Fortunately that won’t happen since teams really only ever wear CC’s at home
Wow that gradient. And the font. And the patch. Woof.
It’s as if the Chargers navy/royal/powder had a baby with the Falcons currently non existent red/black gradient jersey and this popped out. I love how bad some are getting
These are fantastic! Just kidding, they suck
Total garbage.
Just a money grab…but who would buy this sh**?
St.L and the Birds on the Bat are best unis in all of sport.
Hope they dont come out with this kind of crap
Ooof. As a lover of all things Philly and/or Phillies, this is depressingly awful…
So as a Phillie fan I get to see this garbage several times this season. Plus an added negative-With the elimination of the red jersey the Phillies will probably exclusively wear their gray jerseys on the road. I personally would have eliminated the cream alternates; they are based on a uniform the Phils only wore for a few seasons. And the first year (1950) the Phillies replaced it with the red pinstripes they went to the World Series for the first time in 35 years! The only history behind the creams is that it was the uniform Hall of Famers Robin Roberts and Richie Ashburn wore when they came up from the minors.
“Plus an added negative…the Phillies will probably exclusively wear their gray jerseys on the road.”
YVV, err..YMMV, but I don’t see that as a net-negative.
Their grays are one of the best uniforms in MLB (home or road) and for decades that was standard away-wear. I would not like this, but…how about they start taking the powder blues with them on visiting trips – they were designed to be worn on the road in the first place.
Also, the Phils made history wearing the creams (a better look that the pinks, err…pins – one which really ought to be elevated to primary, but that’ll never happen) when they clinched the pennant in ’22, so they gotta keep those around for another 15+ years…the ‘We Won Wearing That Rule’ applies, right? ; )
Lifelong native and Phillies diehard, fully love the cream alts. The royal blue is a nice change, and they wore that uniform when they clinched the division in 2008, the first of many good years in an otherwise sad history.
Exactly. I watched the powder blues on the road growing up. To me, it’s a road uniform.
As a lifelong Phillies fan this uniform, if real, is embarrassing.
I absolutely love everything about this purported leak as a CC design, except the gradient. How bad is gradient as a design feature? So bad that that one minor element negates all of the other design elements that I would grade as at least B-plus good, some of them solid A or A-plus excellent, to render the overall jersey crappy, ugly, D-minus terrible. And for what? The color choices and fonts neatly avoided the trap of looking like a Red Sox CC also-ran. A real shame.
Why does Nike make a gradient?
Because they can.
Holy moly, that is ugly to me. Nike going with the gradient again. They just can’t let that design element go, can they? Definitely leads me to think the pants will be whatever color that is at the bottom of the jersey (navy blue, black?). Having the stitching of the placket that light colored blue all the way through the jersey just irks me. It reminds me of some kind of casual button-up shirt due to that element. Doesn’t look good to me at all.
Well, if fans avoided forking over their cash for this garbage, they would go away. This is all about making money, and apparently enough fans buy these to make it worthwhile.
The reasons Nike creates these uni’s it that the powers corporate looks at: Engagement rates, Posts, social value in $$’s, and impressions. They see it making money. It isn’t going away.
I don’t think anyone ever claimed it was going away.
Has there ever been a stated shelf life for these? Are teams supposed to keep them for five years or anything?
A minimum of three years.
The Nats (so far) are the only team to announce they’re *done* with the CCs (this will be their third, and last season wearing them).
It will be interesting to see if any of the “original 7” to get CC’s in the 2021 season will still wear them this season. I would bet the Red Sox, ChiSox and Marlins (which seem to be very popular) will keep theirs, but I could see the Dodgers and Giants — whose CC’s have generally been panned — will drop them. I’ll bet the Wrigleyville Cubs also are retired. Possible keeps: Serpientes (D Bax), especially since they didn’t add the tan slacks until the second year.
I was expecting them to take inspiration from one of the historic buildings like Independence Hall, City Hall or the Museum of Art (Rocky Steps). I also thought the font to be quill style (Declaration of Independence or Constitution replica).
I am wondering if the chosen “chisel-like font” and the grey or granite color is meant to match the engraving on one of those major buildings or a prominent statue? I have spent a fair amount of time in Philadelphia, but I am not making the connection initially.
I assume the gradient blue will be spun as the different shades of the water in various rivers. Didn’t Nike use this with the Milwaukee Bucks & the lake (a few years ago)?
Yes, some entities are making money from Nike’s despicable City Contest adventure. However I doubt revenues to individual teams is significant.
As an example, the San Diego Padres reported first day sales (2022) for their version of City Connect jerseys was $240,000. Let’s say total sales revenues for the year were one million dollars I think a generous estimate). and that the team’s share was $500,000 – another conservative estimate. These revenue levels gets lost in the rounding compared to the a team’s total advertising/shared revenue. Without actual numbers we are left to only speculate on the actual impact to a teams’ bottom line, but my guess its not that meaningful.
So why do teams indulge in this nonsense? Well any revenue helps, but maybe the Nike-MLB 10-Year Contract has a requirement that teams participate in the program. Perhaps we’ll find out the details someday.
This is f-ing awful. There’s nothing else to say.
Did the designers just go to a preschool and pick up a disgarded drawing from the recycle bin? My 4-year old could have come up with something better. But as a life long Phillies fan, I’ll probably buy one and wear it ironically.
The Uni Watch nation could have produced a number of superior designs in a few short time. Another epic fail for the Nike design amateurs.
..in a very short time.
More clown suits from the morons at nike.
As a lifelong Phillies fan this is offensive.
So bad it has to be legit.
It’s just bad all around. Really depressing because I liked what they did with the Sixers City Connects and it gave me hope. At least it saves me a little money – no way I’d buy it.
Why anyone would close to $200 for this monstrosity is beyond me. Most CC costumes look absolutely terrible.
First off as a lifelong phillies fan from CA I am appalled by first nike coming up with and secondly the team signing off on this 4-8 year olds attempt at coming up with a jersey for a franchise as old as the phillies are and with the “treasure trove”
Of rich history ( good or bad ) to draw from and this is the best a company like nike can come up with ? Wow the font for the Philly on the front isn’t it the body for the electricity mascot from the 20’s you had on the East cost what was his name ? Reddy kilowatt that’s it ……without a doubt other than the most embarrassing uniforms ever designed ( I still say by someone blind ) that being the San Diego Padres city connects this , for this century + franchise is deserving of so much greater with only say even just a 10% effort that as a phillies fan from the west coast mind you i would be calling CBP every chance i got and complain as loudly as possible
To either gets these postponed/canceled BEFORE the first pitch of the season !!
Think about this one …..you have an all star game coming up in 2 years think about that uniform ..
Hell the font for the drawn up all star logo looks a thousand times richer than this childish and amateurish attempt by a SHOE
COMPANY to ruin or stain a century old franchise like the Phillies ??? Surely you philadelphians that are there in Pennsylvania can get something done to stop a shoe company who has no business designing jerseys or any licensed team anything from releasing this undeserving garbage on the most
“Rabid fan base in all of baseball” !!!
this is lazy on my part but i’m going to copy what i said on r/phillies on reddit
Let’s be totally honest… The city connects have little to do with the city and everything to do with Nike making more money. Teams like the Phils who are deeply rooted in their city and the culture of the city don’t need a jersey to express that. Factor in almost every city connect jersey is just straight garbage, it wouldn’t surprise me that ours is as well. It’s a soulless cash grab by Nike.
A city with as much culture and history as Philadelphia and this is what they went with? FAIL.
Anyhting with a gradient is a waste of materials but this jersey is so terrible it makes my eyes water.
Anything with a gradient is a waste of materials but this jersey is so terrible it makes my eyes water.
See, it even influences my spelling…
Catching up on yesterday’s paints this morning as yesterday was a busy work day, so I opened this without it being accompanied by a preview image or anything as it was already down the page. I laughed so loud it scared my dog.
As a lifelong Phillies fan these photos break my soul. This does not look like something the Phillies should be wearing and doesn’t make me think of Philadelphia at all. I don’t watch much regular season baseball in the first place, but I will be sure to avoid the broadcasts of any games in which they wear these abominations.
I’m so glad I’m not a Phillies fan. My condolences to those who are…This is one fugly uniform.
I don’t understand the obsession with trying to use that straight-line gradient on sports uniforms. If there has ever been one that looks good, I can’t think of it. Old Cannucks alt (and the RR), Jaguars’ infamous two-tone helmet, the Falcons’ current eyesore, each seems somehow worse than the last. Maybe there are some soccer kits with gradients out there somewhere that look okay, idk…
With the way the gradient is positioned, this is going to look really strange when tucked into pants. If the pants are dark blue (as it seems they will be), this is going to look like Steve Urkel without the suspenders.
I actually like the colors, but I do not like how they’re used. And that patch…and the number font…and the $175…the whole thing feels like an April Fools joke.