People blaming the ongoing MLB uniform fiasco on Fanatics are so far off-base that it’s almost surprising to encounter a uni issue that actually is Fanatics’ fault.
But that’s what happened last night in Arlington, as Rangers closer Jacob Latz was victimized by an upside-down “Z” on his NOB. As you can see, the red shadows on are supposed to go down and to the right, but the shadow on the “Z” goes up and to the left. It’s easy to miss, but eagle-eyed Uni Watch reader Josh Murphy spotted it. Good catch, Josh!
This is clearly an error by the sewing staff at the Fanatics-owned factory that produces MLB’s on-field uniforms.
Of course, upside-down letters and numerals are an ongoing thing in the uni-verse. We see something like this every couple of months (not to mention more serious miscues like misspellings), so let’s not blow this one out of proportion just because it took place during the Great MLB Uniform Fiasco of 2024. We should file this one under “Amusing Glitches,” not “Further Signs of the Apocalypse.”
I can understand when that happens with plain letters/numbers, but the drop shadow makes that one too obvious to excuse.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it was my understanding that teams themselves had a designated staff member who would sew name and numbers onto jerseys?
That’s for midseason work. First round of uniforms comes from the factory.
ICYMI – here’s a video, from WNBC-TV, profiling Russ Gompers, the man who ‘Stitches’ Mets, Yankees, New York Islanders uniforms.
He grew up steps from Shea Stadium, going to New York Mets games with his father. Weeks before the 1986 World Series, Gompers’ father died of a heart attack. Now, Gompers makes uniforms for the Mets, the Yankees and New York Islanders — and he has been doing it for 33 years.
link
I’ve known Russ since 2004, when I wrote this story about him. link
Don’t the letters/numbers get applied in-house by the teams? I thought the jerseys were shipped to the teams with the team names and sleeve patches applied, and the numbers and NOBs were applied by team personnel.
No.
First batch of uniforms for the season are prepared by the factory.
Easy solution: no shadows. A cleaner look that’s harder (but not impossible to screw up).
I disagree … not that no shadows is a cleaner (i.e. better) look, but that it’s harder to screw up. It’s actually harder to screw up WITH the drop shadows, almost like underlining of the number 6 or 9, to make it easy to know which side is supposed to be up.
Fair point for sure, but at least with no shadow, the error is harder to notice.
An upside-down Z makes him look either totally bad-a55 or in the style of Toys R Us with the backwards R.
These aren’t their regular uniforms for the year, correct? These are the “we won last year’s world series so we’ll have a temporary uniform with gold highlights, totally irrelevant to the rest of our uniform colors, especially since we can’t figure out if Red or Blue is our primary color” uniforms, right?
Right.
This post made me laugh out loud, but I’ve never understood the animus about teams like Texas “not being able to decide” which color they are. The Rangers use the state flag as inspiration for their uniforms, and no one complains that the vexillographers needed to decide which color the state is.
Eagle-eyed observation indeed. How about his other uniforms that came out of the factory, same mistake?
Not this one: link