As I’m typing this, the Dodgers and Padres are playing the first game of the 2024 MLB season in Seoul, South Korea. Former MLB pitcher Chan Ho Park, who played for L.A. and San Diego during his big league career, got things started by throwing out the first pitch while wearing a “Padgers” Frankenjersey.
The Padres are the home team for this game (the designations will be reversed tomorrow), so they’re wearing their home pinstripes. As I reported earlier, they’re wearing the Seoul Series patch on one sleeve and an ad for a Korean streaming service (which has replaced their usual uni ad) on the other, along with a helmet ad for a Korean bank:
Speaking of patches, Padres outfielder Jackson Merrill is wearing the MLB Debut patch (remember those?). Not sure if any other players in this game are making their big league debuts:
The Dodgers are wearing their road “Dodgers” greys and do not have any Korean advertisers. They have the Seoul Series patch on one sleeve, their regular season jersey ad on the other sleeve, and then the jersey advertiser has also bought space on the helmet:
As you can see in that last photo, the script on the road jersey is split through the “d,” just like on the home jersey. Not a surprise, but I think this is the first time we’ve seen it.
Speaking of the Dodgers’ road uni: They do not seem to have been victimized by the mismatched greys. But (a) this game is being played in a dome and (b) this uni set was probably prepared specifically for this series, so we’ll see what happens when they play outdoor road games back in the States.
Here’s something that is a surprise, and a pleasant one at that: The mound for this game is blissfully ad-free! Dig:
Those are all my observations so far. Anyone else spot anything uni-notable?
Update: Right after I published this post, I saw that the back of Padres reliever Jhony Brito’s jersey looks seriously messed up:
I mean, come on!
Go San Angeles Padgers!
Don’t forget Los Diego Dodres!
We don’t speak of those dirt Dodres in this house
Padgers, we don’t need no stinkin’ Padgers!
San Angeles Podgers of Los Diego.
Are the Padres not wearing the Peter Seidler memorial patch?
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Thanks! (you will be missed)
Uni-Watch is going to have a busy opening month of baseball. lol.
Being rendered in team colors, the Dodgers ad patch sort of looks better than the redundant LA patch on the sleeve.
Of course, the Dodgers, rather than Los Angeles gray uniform is brutal to begin with.
I’m curious, what’s brutal about it? Is it only that it says “Dodgers” and not “Los Angeles”. I grew up in Southern California from the 1960s thru 1990, and most of my memory is the road uniform saying Dodgers. I would prefer Los Angeles, but I certainly think it’s still a better road uniform than most other road uniforms.
Agreed. Never really understood the hate for the “Dodgers” version of the road jersey. To me it’s a cleaner look without the piping (or the stripe down the leg), and like you I’m genuinely curious why it gets so much disdain.
I think the feeling is that just copy/pasting the home script onto the road jersey feels lazy and uninspired. Also, the Dodgers’ aesthetic approach is generally quite traditionalist, and teams traditionally wear the team name at home, city name on the road.
I don’t *hate* the team on the road jersey — I mean, it’s not like it looks *bad* or anything like that — but I do find it a bit disappointing compared to the city name.
I agree. I actually never understood for the much bulkier-looking “Los Angeles” when “Dodgers” script is visually so much more appealing (to me anyway).
Of course, I basically grew up seeing “Dodgers” on their roadies, so it looks more appropriate than Los Angeles does.
Yeah, city on the road jersey. I think the only team I don’t mind this with is the Phillies, since their nickname is pretty much self-explanatory.
Road jersey should always identify where you’re from, it is just proper manners.
And it’s a really long name.
Graham Pauley also made his MLB debut for San Diego – I was not paying close enough attention to see if he had the “debut” patch, as he just PH in the 9th.
Yuki Matsui also made his MLB debut and wore his patch!
The PADgers jersey respects the placket!
Oops, no it does not. Why can’t we have nice things?
That can is very good. I love the For the Extra Dirty Hands. The hand does look kind of cut off, though.
I noticed that the Dodgers NOBs were in the size and style of last year’s tops. Did they go back to the larger typeface for the NOBs?
They look like the new style to me.
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Definitely the new style, and wow, that positioning looks just as terrible as we all thought it would. The Dodgers’ single-layer NOBs have never been obnoxiously big and they probably could have gotten away with having them at regular size. But the real problem is that stupid MLB logo and where they position it.
The Dodgers helmet ad looks so cheap. A gloss sticker on a matte helmet? Come on.
Can’t really tell from the pictures posted, but did the gray’s match on the pants and jersey? Appears they did.
Already mentioned in the article!
The Padgers jersey at the top … interesting that if you zoom in, the far right part of the the D is actually on the “gers” side of the jersey. A little odd that they didn’t do a tiny bit of adjusting to move it over. Unless they realized there was already an unnatural gap between the D and the ergs, and didn’t want to make it bigger.
The Dodgers didn’t use the new perforated numbers in either game for some reason.
Yes they did. Hard to see, but it’s definitely there if you enlarge the photo. link