Cardinals infielder Nolan Gorman hit a walk-off home run on Monday night to give the Cards a 5-3 win over the D-backs. As is typical in such situations, his teammates mobbed him and doused him with water. As you can see in the screen shot above, his red undershirt was showing through some of the wet fabric near the Nike maker’s mark as he did a postgame interview.
Last night, Gorman did a pregame interview in which he talked about the home run and its aftermath. Here’s the video of that, followed by the key uni-related passage:
Nolan Gorman says it’s hard not to rewatch last night’s walk-off HR celebration: “It’s video that I’ll go back and look at quite a bit.”
What happened to his jersey? “Somehow my undershirt bled through. The whole right sleeve of that shirt is now a pink color.” #STLCards pic.twitter.com/HLIyAfaO8i
— Bally Sports Midwest (@BallySportsMW) April 23, 2024
Interviewer: What happened to the jersey?
Gorman: It’s gone. It’s all red — my undershirt, I guess —
Interviewer: Wait, what happened? How did it get all red?
Gorman: Just from water, water being thrown on me. It was a wet situation out there, so the water — I don’t know, somehow my undershirt bled through and, uh, yeah, the whole right sleeve of that shirt is now like a pink color.
———
Now, it’s not clear if this was a problem with the base layer (maybe the red dye wasn’t properly sealed into the undershirt fabric) or the with the jersey (maybe the new jersey fabric stains too easily). But we’ve all been seeing water-soaked home run celebrations for years now, and I don’t ever recall seeing or hearing about anything like this. Yet another bizarre first for the 2024 MLB uniforms.
Any chance the maker’s mark contributed to this more than the undershirt?
As a game used collector, that almost sounds like a feature and not a bug, especially if a photo or video shows instant pink after the water celebration.
But as a Uni Watcher, yeah that’s bizarre to think a white jersey is so delicate now
Ok duh, photo right there in the article! As a collector I would be delighted to have that
As you said, it could be more of an undershirt problem than a jersey problem.
It’s a lame celebration problem.
Definitely. As the bromide goes: Act like you’ve been there before.
It almost has to be – that or it wasn’t water getting dumped on him. The new jersey fabric shouldn’t magically leech dye out of a fabric that otherwise wouldn’t have a wet crocking issue. Even if it “held” a dye or stain exposure more than the old fabric, that doesn’t explain why the red dye bled in the first place.
Sounds like something went wrong for the dye lot of that undershirt, or if it wasn’t a new undershirt it may have gotten exposed to something in the washing process that affected its colorfastness. I’ll have to dig a bit, but the only (unlikely) thing I can think of is that the new jersey tops have some sort of finish on them that when mixed with water and exposed to the undershirt drew out some of the dye, but I can’t think of any likely culprits there.
I still think after a slide, the base runner’s jersey and pants appears to retain the infield dirt more readily. It used to be a player could just brush most of it off. Now it seems like it’s in the fabric. Would be curious, if after a head first slide during this season, a player later changed his jersey and/or pants during the game.
Why would a player change out of a dirty uniform? They’re usually quite proud of getting it dirty.
It’s all a big conspiracy to move the league away from white home jerseys and towards colored softball tops!!!
(This is a joke)
In the old days, we used to be told to wash lights and darks separately, for precisely this reason. However, it *is* possible to make color-fast garments, so that the undershirt wouldn’t shed dye like this. I would think this would be part of the specs for performance athletic gear, which is, in ordinary use, exposed to sweat and water (given how reluctant umps are to stop games in even relatively heavy rain).
Well, that is Fanatics quality for you…just wait until their get their mitts on the NHL jerseys next year!
Two things…I recently got a pair of polyester sweatpants and played softball in them. I made a diving stop, got up and brushed almost all of the dust and mud off. On my cotton sweatpants, that would have needed a washing. The fabric is hugely important in how stains take hold. Secondly, whenever I get a new garment, especially a red one, I wash it by itself first to bleed off any excess dye. I probably should wash whites and colors separately all the time, but am too lazy to.
Must be the dye of the new undershirt he wore.
Caught the Yankees game yesterday and popped into the stadium museum again. The difference in quality between the old timer’s jerseys displayed and today’s Nike abominations is startling. Yesteryear: sturdy, lasting quality. Today: flimsy, disposable garbage.
Is it at all possible that, in all the chaos, someone tossed red Gatorade/Powerade?