Oh, MLB. You’ve done it again.
Remember back in 2018, when MLB unveiled Fourth of July caps with the opening words of the United States Constitution?
Paul quickly pointed out the mistake, which actually led MLB to removing the inaccurate quote from the brim of the caps.
It seems like MLB has made another holiday-related mistake for their 2025 St. Paddy’s Day caps.
Take a close look at the cap above. Notice anything amiss?
To create St. Patrick’s caps for all teams this year, MLB has created green caps with a subtle, but noticeable, four leaf clover.
A four-leaf clover is not the primary symbol for St. Patrick’s Day, since the traditional Irish symbol associated with the holiday is the “shamrock,” which is a three-leaf clover.
St. Patrick used the three leaves of the shamrock to represent the “Holy Trinity,” and hence is the more relevant symbol for the celebration. While a four-leaf clover is considered lucky, it doesn’t have the same historical significance to St. Patrick’s Day as the standard shamrock does, nor is it correctly associated with the holiday.
Whoops.
While this is a fairly easy (and surprisingly common) mistake to make, I’m surprised this one got by. Or maybe I’m not.
Anyway, I highly doubt MLB will see fit to correct this mistake, but that’s the state of merchandise these days.
Here’s a look at all the four leaf clover St. Paddy’s day caps for 2025:
AL East
AL Central
AL West
NL East
NL Central
NL West
Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
I actually like the look of the new St. Patrick’s Day caps, but that four leaf clover…yikes.
Your thoughts?
Somebody didn’t do their reeeeeeeee-search.
“NE West” should be “NL…”
Thanks, Leo. Now fixed.
The official MLB cap for casino trips and sports gambling.
Sounds like a question of the week for Mike.
What clothing do you wear when you “need” luck?
I like this comment!
It’s not wrong… for us Celtic FC fans
Alas, it looks like fact-checking has gone the way of newspaper copy-editing.
Have to see one in real life, but I don’t see shamrocks or 4 leaf clovers, just a dark green cap that had droplets of bleach sprayed on it when it went through the wash.
Yeah these are gonna be gnarly from a distance.
MLB’s St. Patrick’s Day merch has always been odd to me, since it’s worn during Spring Training games that no one cares about.
It’s truly a “yay new baseball stuff, gotta grab it!” kind of thing.
This Irish dude is guilty of getting so excited about baseball and St. Patrick’s Day that I’ve grabbed a green Mets cap in the past. Aaaaand, it’s sat on my shelf for, like…51 weeks of the year.
I do like special event uniforms, so I’m all for MLB doing green caps (and green jerseys, if they’re so bold), but it’s a fairly unnecessary merch dump with the shelf life of Bodega whole milk.
I like fun things, and this is a one day fun thing. This 100% better than the City Connect uniforms.
Another addition to the extensive “Oh dear, what’s wrong with my television?” line of apparel.
Say what you will but I actually like these, every year I expect just a green cap with the logo in a white outline.
Not sure why the orange. The orange in Ireland represents the minority Protestants who were supporters of William of Orange.
But it’s on the flag!
I like the caps. But..man $60 for a fitted with shipping…gotta pass.
Meh— it’s not my ox that was gored. Now, if baseball made Steuben Day Parade hats with iron crosses or the Hackenkreuz, you’d hear from me, by gum!
This is a New Era issue. I bought a Buffalo Bills hat a few years ago and that had the 4 leaf clover too.
This is an America issue. As long as we see “Irish” as a monolithic brand, where St Patrick is indistinguishable from Lucky Charms, these things will keep happening.
Not an expert on Ireland or Saint Patrick (even as a Notre Dame and Celtic FC fan) but this is a clumsy mistake. It is like mixing up 4th of July and 5th of July: close enough but still not right.
In my journalism career, two errors I committed drew by far the loudest, angriest, and most voluminous reader response: The time I misspelled Ottawa and the time I assigned a photo of a four-leaf clover to a feature on St. Patrick’s Day. As for the latter, I’m the son of an Irish Catholic family, born on St. Patrick’s Day, so I have no excuse. Confusing a clover for a shamrock is such a boneheaded mistake, and it’s one that anyone who cares, which in this case means most of the people who might want to buy the cap, will notice.
As for the orange, St. Patrick’s Day, especially in North America, needn’t be sectarian. The green white orange tricolor of the Republic of Ireland was designed as a symbol of inclusivity, and it’s fine to include orange when celebrating Irish-ness. Besides, the traditional color of St. Patrick is blue.
Now that Paul is gone is it safe for me to again say, without getting banned, that his crusade against the “We The People” thing was overblown considering the Fourth of July is clearly a holiday that celebrates everything related to the United States, not simply the Declaration of Independence (even though the date obviously originates from it)?
So, do the Colorado Rockies represent the Protestants more?
The bigger issue is definitely mixing orange and green, lmao. That’s the kind of thing that would have gotten you disappeared by the IRA in the 1980s.
The sublimated clovers will undoubtedly open up a new era (groan) of cap detailing.
Another fine example of being consistently inconsistent: The main properties of each team’s cap logos, whether the logos are solid white or colored, when turned green, offers little contrast against the green caps. Even with the attempt to offset the logos with the orange and white borders, most of the logos look like a major washout.