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St. Louis Cardinals Unveil City Connect Unis, Confirming Earlier Leak

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As expected, the St. Louis Cardinals unveiled their City Connect uniforms this morning, confirming last week’s leak.

Although the leak wasn’t a full unveiling (we barely got to see the pants, which will be white, and not the special CC socks), this morning’s release has confirmed much of what we already knew, with a couple new details.

Let’s take a look at the new uniforms.

As you can see the cap and jersey are both in classic Cardinal red, while the pants are white with a fairly thick red stripe traversing the sides. The cap features the abbreviation “STL” in a Tuscan font.

As we learned during Friday night’s leak, that font is based on the font used during 1920-21. In 1922, the team would first add a birds-on-bat logo to the jersey front.

Like the cap, the jersey is red, and somewhat similar to a jersey the team had previously worn during spring training. However, instead of the classic “Cardinals” script (in red outlined in white), the CC jersey says “The Lou,” in white with a dark outline atop the familiar birds-on-bat logo the team currently uses.

As you can see, the logo is chain-stitched (a format now unique to the Cardinals). As we were informed in the leak, the nickname is attributable to Nelly, a St. Louis native.

Also noted during the leak are the “river pinstripes” (those slightly darker red wavy lines running vertically down the jersey). Additionally the jersey features “1882” on the inside of the collar, a patch on the sleeve, and the words “St. Louis Cardinals” in the same Tuscan font as the cap, on the jersey tail.

Since the shirts will (presumably) be tucked in, that won’t be visible on the field, and of course, the 1882 on the inside collar will also not be seen.

The sleeve patch was partially seen during the leak, and we were shown a graphic of it during the storytelling. That patch combines two of St. Louis’ most recognizable symbols: the fleur de lis and the famous arch.

Here’s a crisper graphic of the new patch:

Here’s an additional look at the storytelling for the uniform elements.

One thing that wasn’t apparent in the leak (and is actually pretty hard to tell even now) is the mention of the jersey and pants containing the “river stripes” — that detail is briefly shown in the hype video (which is below), and features a squiggly line traversing the red pants stripe.

As mentioned, we did not get to see the team’s CC socks during the leak (and in all photos of I’ve seen of players wearing the pants, they’ve all gone low-cuffed). But they are of course an option, and will be mostly solid red, with the river stripe element a bit more apparent than on the jersey. They will have the abbreviation “STL” in white with navy blue outline.

The team released an approximately two minute hype video, with some better looks at the uniforms being seen in the second minute.

You can read a bit more about the CC here, and you can also read a review by Oliver Kodner, a Uni Watch pal and contributor, and who is also responsible for the incredibly comprehensive St. Louis Cardinals logo/uni database.

Some very quick thoughts:

• As far as CC’s go, this is one of the more restrained ones — with just enough customization to set it apart from other Cards’ unis, but also retaining the same overall feel of other Cardinals uniforms.

• I don’t mind the “STL” on the cap (and thankfully they didn’t repeat “The Lou”), but I’d love to have seen how it looked with the sleeve patch.

• Like all 2024 CC jerseys, this one contains sublimation (the river stripes); thankfully it shouldn’t be visible from more than three feet away. I believe this new feature is as much a design element as it is to attempt to prevent unlicensed knock-offs.

• Believe it or not, this is the first time the Cardinals will have a red jersey for regular season play. Well…not quite. For one game in 1999, on August 28th of that year, the Cardinals wore a red jersey which featured an MDA patch and was part of a Shirts Off Their Backs promotion.

• It’s part and parcel of the CC program to usually wear a nickname or abbreviation to the jersey, and the Cardinals have gone with “The Lou.” The team attributes this to Nelly, a native son who “made popular” the nickname. Not being a denizen of St. Louis, I don’t know how popular or widespread that nickname is amongst St. Louisans or Cardinals fans. This is honestly, IMO, the worst feature of the new CC.

• I like the sleeve patch, especially since it’s pretty much the only “extra” element on the uniform. As I said above, I’d love to have seen how that patch looks on the cap.

• I’m not overly fond of the “STL” on the cap, but it’s not as unwieldy as say, the Tigers CC cap.

• In most cases, I prefer uniforms to have the same color pants as jerseys — but with all the red already featured (cap, jersey, socks), the white pants are probably the best accompaniment. An all-red uni would have been red overload. When Cleveland sported a red jersey/pants look in the 1970s, at least their caps had navy blue crowns, and players wore navy stirrups over white sanis.

• Overall, and as far as CC unis go, this is — like Cleveland — one of the best for 2024. If you turn on a game when these uniforms are being worn, you’ll pretty much instantly know you’re watching the Cardinals.

The Cardinals are one of nine MLB teams getting new City Connect uniforms this season. Here’s the rundown on the other eight teams:

The Cardinals will debut this uniform this Saturday, May 25th, and are scheduled to wear the uniform twelve times (although several teams have worn their CC’s more often than initially announced).

What are your thoughts on the Cardinals new togs?

 
  
 
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Comments (78)

    The only people I’ve ever heard use it (beside Nelly) are suburban white dudes that were in HS when Country Grammar was a hit. The type of dude that peaked in HS and is desperately trying to hang on to that peak.

    Every person I know that is currently posting “For the Lou” on my socials fits that description.

    I think that’s the Cards official hashtag this year? I bet if you had a heat map though, a good chunk would be from St. Charles County.

    A ton of West County people are using “The Lou’ more frequently than before. Seems the sports teams have brought it to bigger ages groups.

    I posted ‘Hey now’ as a joke. I’d like it to be on record as a native St. Louisan I don’t use the Lou to refer to St.Louis either. And I hope I didn’t peak in high school.

    If anyone in st louis refers to it as “the lou”, go ahead and let that be Jong Un’s first target.
    If they dont, go ahead and make Beaverton Oregon the target.
    Either way, scumbags are removed from Earth.

    St. Louisan here – no one here refers to St. Louis as “The Lou” except corporate marketers and people trying to sound intentionally lame.

    Exactly – great comparison! I have a friend who lives in San Francisco, and I know I can rile her up just by saying “Frisco.”

    Which I’m pretty sure is Missouri’s fault on that one, due to “Frisco” being the nickname for the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway, which, as a bonus, never went anywhere near San Francisco.

    Or referring to Boston as “Bean Town”
    nobody in all of New England calls Boston Bean Town

    As a Bay Area resident and someone that loves history, I think it’s dumb that people don’t support this fun moniker, instead opting for the creatively bankrupt monikers “SF” or “The City”. Early in the gold rush era when San Francisco replaced the name Yerba Buena, Frisco was the name of choice in mining circles. It then laid more or less dormant for a hundred years until it was adopted by the beat poets and jazz musicians that were such a vibrant part of Frisco’s history. But hey, SF sure rolls off the tongue.

    Same with Cleveland and “the land”. I’ve never heard anyone from here call it that.

    For what it’s worth, I heard a certain Akron native say in a TV commercial say, “Let’s win one for The Land.”

    Even though I’m not British, whenever I hear something referred to as “The Lou”, I think they’re talking about toilets.

    That is certainly the case here.

    Aesthetically these are not bad but the “The Lou,” is terrible since it’s not a real term. However, the hat is nice if I were a Cardinals fan I’d buy that cap.

    I don’t love the cap. But the rest seems to fit a franchise like the Cardinals that has been pretty traditional with its uniforms.

    I can promise that not a single human being living in the greater St. Louis metro area does or ever has said “The Lou” unless they were in the middle of recording a hip-hop track in the year 2000.

    St. Louisan here. I will sidestep the whole “Lou” thing except to say that a) it’s locally controversial but b) some locals do use it.(I’m not one of them.)
    My comment has to do with the sleeve patch, which I love. Presumably, though, this will mean the Whitey Herzog memorial patch will not appear on the CC jersey so that they can keep the ad on the other sleeve. I would love to be wrong about this and have the CC jersey be ad-free.

    No such luck. You can partially see the ad on the right sleeve of the player in the center of this photo. link

    Pretty sure that every team which has an ad patch has put them on their CC (even if they didn’t have one originally)

    Yeah, I knew it was a faint hope. At least they will have the Whitey memorial patch on the other jerseys. For reasons unknown to me, at least, they never had a Mike Shannon memorial patch on last season’s jersey.

    “The Lou” feels like the uni equivalent of Poochie from the Simpsons (link). It’s like a bunch of corporate suits, trying to appeal to “the kids,” chose references and tropes that are roughly a decade or more past their peak. Nelly was certainly an iconic entertainer in the Aughts, but is he really what the leading edge of popular culture would consider relevant these days? As Poochie would say, “…NOT!”

    “Hello there, Itchy. I know there’s a lot of people who don’t like me and wish I would go away and I think we got off on the wrong foot. I know I can come off a little proactive, and for that I’m sorry. But if everyone could find a place in their hearts for the little dog nobody wanted I know we can make ’em laugh and cry till we grow old together.”
    -Poochie

    The feature of including a supposed local nickname on these uniforms is one of their biggest faults (among many big faults). There are some teams/cities where a nickname for the city sort of works, but there are like a half dozen of these shitty connects that are a joke with the name on the unform. The sad thing is this one, like Cleveland, wouldn’t be awful if they just put the actual city name on there.

    The hat is boring and “The Lou” is such a niche thing. At least they kept the birds on bat and chain stitching.

    Paul, are teams allowed to wear their City Connect hats with their normal uniforms?

    I was wondering the same thing. Can City Connect hats be worn with a team’s standard uniform? Hopefully, Paul or Phil will chime in.

    “Can City Connect hats be worn with a team’s standard uniform?”

    I don’t believe there’s any prohibition on so doing; this past weekend, several teams who wear CCs paired them with the AF caps (and socks), so clearly there is no prohibition on other caps being worn with the CCs. I would think the team *could* therefore pair the CC caps with primary uniforms. With the exception of a few teams, however, I’m not sure the caps are particularly interchangeable. STL would be, but I don’t know if they’d pair that cap with any of their other unis (white, gray, cream, powder).

    Feels like a pretty safe CC uniform set here, didn’t venture too far from what they normally look like. “The Lou” is lame especially if it’s not embraced by locals and the hat leaves a lot to be desired, but overall not the best CC look, not the worst. I actually enjoy these City Connect uniforms when they think outside of the box and get more creative – even when the look doesn’t exactly land. My favorite look has been what the Royals have done, but there are lots of other cool looks that they have come up with.

    It makes me think of Lou Brock.

    But I like where your mind is going.

    I know the stripes represent the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, but in my mind they will always represent the lines of brake lights stretching down 64/40 at all hours of the day! haha

    I can’t get past that the “L” in “Lou” isn’t hooked up onto the bat. Seems like that should have been a no-brainer.

    No….if you hook up both the “T” and the “L”, it gives the impression that the whole inscription is slanted in the same plane as the bat. By hooking up only the “T”, you can say that the inscription is in a flat plane.

    For so many CC unis, I would scoff at the uniform but say, “Well at least the hat is kind of interesting.” Between Detroit and this…. not anymore.

    The Stifel Cardinals go to the Lou…
    This is a joke, I need a smoke… wait a minute

    Well, my question as been asked and answered a few times now – does anyone in St. Louis call it “The Lou”. A resounding ‘NO!’ is what I am seeing.

    Other than that, it doesn’t seem like an offensive uniform, I guess. I don’t mind the hat, but I think it would be better if they used the 1940 Road style: link

    Or the 1976 “pillbox” style.

    But what do I know? :)

    Outside from Nelly, I haven’t heard of anybody refer to St. Louis as “The Lou”.

    These aren’t awful. Red is fine as a jersey, the river stripes aren’t noticable. The hat and text work as well. Also white text with the Birds on Bat hasn’t been done so I like that too. Really the only issue here is the “The Lou” which will inspire multitudes of toilet jokes. That feels like the Alarm Clock Bucs moment where no one on the design team chose it before it was too late.

    My only other note is why not try for a Brown variation? The 1882 teams was the St Louis Browns and remained that way until 1899. The Browns really aren’t associated with the Orioles anymore. A Browns Bird on Bats would be interesting. But Oh well all in all good for a city connect.

    Since I was a kid, I always had an affinity for baseball sleeve patches, which until recently, have almost always been embroidered. Obviously, I do not support the move to printed patches and I hate even calling them patches. I guess technically they are, but I am calling them printed appliques. Anybody up for coming up with a snarky term for them so we don’t call them patches?

    Have a good buddy who lived in St Louis for many years. So I’ve spent a lot of time there, I actually really enjoy it for a great midwestern city. I’ve even been to a Cardinals playoff game, tremendous atmosphere! And then we got to hang out with a few of the Cardinals players at a bar downtown afterwards. So understand that I say this with a lot of love, but I always used to needle him by calling it “The Loo” based the shall we say, non-pristine condition of many of the city’s establishments. So that’s what I’m going to think of when I see this jersey. But actually I think this is one of the best CC designs overall, decent stuff!

    Like most of the comments here, I call this CC “not awful.” I also wouldn’t really call it necessary, either, but that’s also an argument against the entire CC program.

    The restraint in design here makes me wonder what the Yankees would have insisted upon had they participated in the CC program. Ideally, the Yankees design would be nothing more than their reverse pinstripes that almost took the field in 1973.

    link

    Considering what monstrosities some of the other CC unis have been, I was fearing the worst. Thankfully, these are at least tolerable, and aren’t too askew from their red BP set (which I liked). “The Lou” is completely lame, but if you’re going for a city “nickname”, I don’t know what else you’d use….I’m a Cardinals fan, but not a St. Louisan, so maybe there’s something that would have fit better? Not sure.

    But I am SO relieved that they’re using white pants. I was fearing they’d be head-to-toe red (or even worse, head-to-toe black, or some combination thereof), so I’m glad they weren’t stupid enough to try to make this a completely garish clown suit like the Rays, Tigers, Phillies, Reds, and others have.

    It’s still completely unnecessary, but yeah, one of the better of the City Connect program….granted, a low bar, but still…

    I actually like them. At least they’re not an over-designed cluttered mess like most of the other City Connect unis.

    I like the throwback font on the cap, nice and simple. The jersey is ok, too red for my taste but I’m glad they kept the BoB. As for “The Lou”, from my experience it has become somewhat common to use as a local moniker. Often ironically but not always……..I mean, “Sweet Lou” was already taken, more than once. I agree with Uni, these are among the best CC schemes I’ve seen; most of the others are just brutally ugly.

    It feels like the took 10 minutes to do this. It is literally no different than what they usually do. Just different worse under the bat logo. Hat so so bad. Be better franchise of the supposed BFIB.

    They actually have a retail version of the cap with the sleeve patch logo:

    link

    If they removed the side patch on the hat, this would be a much better product than the hat they decided to go with.

    Other than the chest lettering, this strikes me as an excellent Cardinals alternate uniform, but probably a failure of a City Connect uniform. I’d rather have seen STL on the jersey and the FDL/Arch logo on the cap.

    I suspect that sublimation like the river stripes is going to be a major design element for regular uniforms under Nike at some point soon.

    The sleeve graphic would look pretty cool on a hat. Otherwise these kinda remind me of Angels alt uniforms. Nothing special but I suppose way better than the Detroit or Seattle clustercusses. (I’m an M’s fan but their CC unis are a bust).

    Team shop is selling a “fashion” hat with the sleeve logo on the front. It has the river pinstripes as well, call me crazy but I like this as hat for CC uni.

    link

    Come on Nike. Come up with something unique. The three letter acronyms on these MLB/NBA merch has gotten old (let’s throw the Falcons in the mix with ATL). Also, “The City”, “The Land”, “The This” and “The That” has run it’s course as well.

    An airport code (I assume) is lame for a cap. Seems lazy! “The Lou” is not very good either. It seems The Lou is to attrack a certain demographic that will likely never embrace baseball as much as basketball and football. Without the STL and The Lou, the uniform would like very nice.

    Well, yes, it is an airport code, but unlike other cities, we actually use it. Mostly as shorthand, but still. The STL is even our cap logo. It definitely gets a lot more use than “PGH” at the very least

    I hope one of our talented conceptors takes that sleeve patch and runs with it. Now my 2nd favorite design element of all the CC’s. (#1 Cubs hat logo, #3 Rangers number font, in case you were curious).

    I like the river pinstripe but sure feels like Ive seen it before representing a river. Anyone else recall this?

    D

    When was the last time one of these CC disasters actually made it to the planned release date without any leaks?

    Would have liked to see the birds on the arch.

    Overall, though, it’s one of my favorite CC uniforms because of the colors and simplicity. They kept it on brand.

    The best CC effort so far except for The Lou, I mean, come on…It should have read Cards. With the two birds on top of the C and the d. And the bat sticking through the a and the d. But otherwise: nice.

    Best looking CC uni since the Angels. Do the Cardinals have a historic connection to the Tuscan font?

    Barely. They used it a bit in the early 20s, just before they adopted the Birds On The Bat.

    The gimmick is famously called City Connect. Why would you use the year your franchise was established (1882) instead of the year the city was established (1822)?

    I really want to like the hat, but it feels like a miss. I would prefer to see the arch on the patch in a shimmery silver thread than navy.

    Kinda sucks that this website has turned into a bunch of boomers yelling at the clouds. I’m 39 I have no interest in owning jerseys and I won’t be buy in this one either. But, I was at the game last night and it seemed like just about everyone there was happy with the new look. You couldn’t turn or look in any direction without seeing the new swag. Good for the cardinals. We haven’t been playing the best, better as of late. This is getting people excited. Let’s all just relax and let the game evolve a little for a younger generation. For the boomers, enjoy yelling at clouds.

    “The Lou” should immediately be put on the door to every bathroom in Busch Stadium.

    And now this is the second uniform Paul Goldschmidt has been the model for! He was also featured in the Diamondbacks new uniform set of 2015.

    They look nice but they don’t look all that different from their regular uniforms.

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