Uni Tracking MLB Core Four + One (or Two)

Good morning, Uni Watchers. It’s Friday — we made it.

I’m currently writing this from a motel room (and it’s 1:57 am), having finished a very late draw in my bonspiel. But we beat a really good team, so I’m happy and exhausted. Anyway, I’ll be off the grid for most of the day, but our own Susan Freeman and Jamie Rathjen will both have articles (Susan’s is below), and there will also be an additional special piece from our Founder and Editor Emeritus, Paul Lukas, later this morning. So you’re definitely going to want to keep checking back. Huge, double-plus thanks to all of them for stepping up while I’m off having fun.

And with that, I now turn the rest of the lede over to Susan, who has a very special Uni tracking to share with us. Enjoy!

When I started the Spring Training first look posts, I immediately realized I needed a base uniform guide of the 4 plus 1 uniforms for each team.  And I could not find a single go-to that had all the fields/data I wanted – like a really great and exhaustive source may have only included the jersey.  So the obvious response is, of course, to make my own.  I went straight to Excel and quickly sketched up a few teams.  As you may have learned yesterday, I love Excel.  It is so good for so many things – and I can have tabs to store all similar data in one file!

So – we have a row for hat color, a skinny row for hat brim, a row for jersey color, then a row for pants and, of course, columns for their vertical stripes.  I started with three rows (hat, jersey, and pants) and of course had to insert rows and columns as I went – first one being the hat brim.  That part is a pain because you have to make lots of adjustments if you didn’t guess right.  So hat and brim are covered.  Jersey is covered – although, sadly, there’s not much you can do there with the uni details we love so much… And pants are covered – complete with up to three stripes.

Hmmm, three stripes.  So what do I do with Atlanta and Cleveland City Connects?  Damn, there is always an outlier that messes things up.  In this case I did not want to add two more columns and go readjust 28 teams.  Although, in hindsight, that might have been the right answer to deal with bi-colored hats and jersey sleeves of a different color (see below).  At the time those two nuances had not yet popped up on my radar.  So I was able to add a left or right thick border in red to the white columns in order to get my five stripes.

Pinstripes are easy, there is a pattern fill in the cell formatting options.  You can even do gradient, like the Phillies CC jersey and Rays City Connect pant stripes.

As mentioned above, two-color hats are a bit frustrating because the middle color in front isn’t as wide as I would like – but I was utilizing my three pants stripes columns.  So I will live with it.  Same story with jerseys with different colored sleeves.  Had I gone with more columns, I would have had more options for panel widths.  But to go back and implement that would kind of suck.  Maybe next year…

Note: If you are wondering why some teams have their own headers or the team name on the left is bolded, that is a data gathering feature for me.  And it is all related to verification with the style guide.  Bolded team name means verified from 2025 style pages – it has to be all uniform options.  The headers above a team would be what the style guide pages called each uniform.  I have the top row of the spreadsheet frozen so I always have headers visible if a team does not have specific headers yet.

As for the colors, I used the same red and yellow for aesthetic reasons.  Some of the Pantone codes just made it look too dark for viewing – plus the website I used does not always designate the differences between print and uniform.  But for the blues I used Pantone codes.  There are at least TEN different blues in this screen capture.  Note: I did not really try to match Spring Training colors to the actual hats they are wearing unless it was obvious like the Astros.

You really do have to limit yourself and not get too bogged down.  It is meant to be a color block.  And it’s hard because at times you want to add details (like sleeve stripes) but also don’t want to clutter it up.  This is a quick-look reference of ALL teams, not a single team history.

So let’s go back to the jerseys.  Without headspoons and sleeve stripes, sun collars, and all the other things we obsess over, you are limited what you can show in that small space.  I could make the jersey block bigger to show more details, but then I lose uniformity of the overall chart.  But you kind of need that area to focus in on something.

I can use the jersey cell to show unique team/city names.  For example, if there are two white jerseys, I want to identify the difference between the two.  I started with no wording if standard home whites have team name and road grays have city name. Same goes if there’s a designated “Home Alt” and it includes team name. But if you have a designated “Home Alt” that has city name on it, that wording would be included.  A lot of the style guides do not designate Home Alt or Road Alt – they just use the term “Alt” or “Alt 1” and “Alt 2.”  So, I am definitely not rigid on this because it is also about aesthetics of the chart. A perfect example is I did fill in the Cardinals and that looks good – and almost helps you find yourself in the chart.  So I am still playing with that aspect.

I only wish Excel supported outlined text…

There may be errors, and I apologize if there are. This chart is only a couple of weeks old.  It did indeed help with the Spring Training first look article.  I’m looking forward to the reveal of new City Connects (yes, I did say that and never thought I would) and Opening Day so I can fill in the missing pieces.  Would you have done something differently?