Although most MLB teams will be opening their seasons on March 28, the Dodgers and Padres will be getting a head start by playing two regular season games in Seoul, South Korea — the first MLB games ever in that country — on March 20 and 21. As you can see above, the teams will wear commemorative “Seoul Series” cap patches for those games.
Although nothing has yet been announced, it’s likely that the teams will also wear those same patches on their sleeves. That’s what the Giants and Padres did when they played two games in Mexico City last season:
Although the Giants and Padres both have sleeve advertisers, history suggests that their usual ad patches will be supplanted by new sleeve advertisements specifically for these two games, and that additional ads will be applied to their batting helmets. Again, that’s what happened last year in the Giants/Padres series:
Each team will have one home game, so they’ll each play one game in their home whites and the other in their road uniforms. Also, I have it on good authority that the Padres, who have two Korean players on their roster — infielder Ha-Seong Kim and pitcher Woo-Suk Go — are planning to wear some sort of uni-numbered traditional Korean attire for the trip.
The season opener on March 20 will be televised on ESPN and is scheduled to begin at 6am Eastern.
Substack Reminder
In case you missed it yesterday: My Uni Watch Premium article this week on Substack is an open letter to Major League Baseball — a companion piece to the letter I wrote last week to Nike.
You can read the first part of the letter here. In order to read the entire thing, you’ll need to become a paid subscriber to my Substack (which will also get you full access to my Substack archives). Also, if you become a monthly subscriber for $5, your one month will include my annual MLB Season Preview, which will come out toward the end of March.
My thanks, as always, for your consideration.
ITEM! Uni Watch 25th-Anniversary Tour Is Now a Go!
I am happy to report that we reached our funding goal late yesterday for the Uni Watch 25th-Anniversary Tour Travel Fund. Thank you so much to everyone who contributed — it was a true comm-uni-ty effort!
As a result, the tour is now a go! I’ll book the flights later today. Full details on the tour are available here, but here’s the short version:
- Friday, May 17 — Purp Walk 2024 in Baltimore: Daytime activities will include a tour of the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum (time slot TBA), a duckpin bowling outing (location and time TBA), and the unveiling of a Uni Watch-themed salt box (location and time TBA), and then we’ll have a 7pm Purp Walk gathering (the final one ever!) at Union Brewing.
- Sunday, May 19 — Minneapolis: We’ll hang out at Jimmy Lonetti’s excellent D&J Glove Repair Shop from 11am-1pm and then have a festive Uni Watch gathering at Gluek’s from 2-5pm.
- Tuesday, May 21 — Los Angeles: Details for this one are still in the works. More soon.
- Thursday, May 23 — New Orleans: We’ll gather at 7pm at Avenue Pub. Sorry, no extracurricular activities for this stop on the tour, because I’ll be spending my free time (assuming I have any!) catching up with some close friends who I haven’t seen in a while.
- Sunday, May 26 — New York: This day will be Uni Watch’s official 25th anniversary — and will also be my final day. We’ll gather from 1-5pm at the Bowery Electric in the East Village. From about 2:15 to 3:30, the great hockey-rock band the Zambonis will play downstairs — that performance will have a cover charge of $12 (all of which will go to the band). But you can also just hang out on the main level and mingle. Tickets for the Zambonis show aren’t available yet, but I’ll let you know when they are.
That should be a lot of fun. It should also be exhausting for yours truly, but hopefully in a good way. Thanks again to everyone who made this possible by contributing to the travel fund!
Now that I know the tour is definitely happening, we’ll have tour T-shirts available soon (or at least soon-ish), so stay tuned for that, and for other details that I’ll be announcing soon.
Can of the Day
I never get tired of seeing these intentional misspellings!
• • • • •
I have a family obligation beginning at about 11am today, so I’ll be scarce after that. Play nice while I’m away, okay? Thanks! — Paul
Paul, will you be making a “guest entry” to recap all of the gatherings? I always look forward to the pics of all the unique unis and I always love your travelogues.
I will try to document the gatherings.
Color-specific car wax sounds like a real gamble.
I’m not a fan of all these dumb special hats, but you’d think MLB/New Era could have been a little more creative than this. For example, they could have rendered the “LA” and “SD” either in the Korean alphabet or in characters that look like the Korean alphabet. This patch is as boring as it gets, and some of the words are so small as to be completely unreadable. Fail.
Came here to say exactly this. These would be nicer and more special and probably sell more to people who would actually wear them as a “daily” hat (rather than just keep it in a collection) if the hats said LA or Los Angeles and SD or San Diego in Korean script. Same goes for the uni wordmarks
The KBO League doesn’t even use hangul on their caps, so why should visiting MLB teams?
Oh. Excuse us.
Missed opportunity to call it a “Seoul Patch”
Yup. My bad.
It’s spring training for everyone else. For the Padres and Dodgers, it’s (in the voice of Don Cornelius) Seoul Training.
Well done, sir. COTD.
The series patch looks very generic indeed. Not generic at all is the Can Of The Day: so many nice fonts but with a simple color scheme so it works for me!
Uni-Watch people who can’t make it to one of the tour stops could gather from 5/17-5/26 in various cities/locales for one final toast to Paul as well – I think this happened for the 20th anniversary:
link
Have to decide on a good purple soccer shirt for May 17
Way to go Uni Watch comm-uni-ty!
Looking forward to seeing many of you (and Paul) in Minneapolis!
Cheers to the comm-UNI-ty!! Looking forward to the Minneapolis stop!
I find it very disheartening that MLB will be playing a series in Mexico City when there is an extreme water crisis.
The city is literally out if water, but MLB and Mexico City authorities somehow will have water for that event and the players (I am aware the field is artificial turf).
If any time there was a call for an advertiser or sponsor to step up, this would be the perfect time for it and deliver water for the people instead of promoting a professional baseball game.
The Mexico series was last year.
Really?
“Regular season games will return to Mexico City for a second consecutive season on April 27-28, 2024, at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú, featuring the Houston Astros and Colorado Rockies”.
Just want to make sure we are looking af the same schedule.
Unless there’s another Mexico City, MX that the Rockies and Astros are playing at in April 2024…
link
FWIW I don’t believe the Giants had started wearing an ad patch until well after the series is Mexico. Point still stands because the Padres did, but worth mentioning.
Count me and Michelle in for May 26. I wish I could do Baltimore, but I have two conferences the week before and I need to do lots of flying for those.
Why does MLB almost always send teams from the same league to these special games? Why not one AL team
Against a NL team? The London game is the same, two National League teams are going.