After recently releasing an all new home jersey for 2025 the Fort Wayne TinCaps have unveiled their MiLB Copa de la Diversión jersey and cap for this year’s Fun Cup (if you’re not aware, “Copa de la Diversión” or “Fun Cup” is a season-long event series specifically designed to embrace the culture and values that resonate most with Minor League Baseball teams’ local U.S. Hispanic communities).
The TinCaps will be playing as the Manzanas Luchadoras (“Fighting Apples” in Spanish). It’s a beautiful cap and jersey, and we’ll start with the hype video…
New season, new look for our Manzanas Luchadoras alternate identity! 🤼 🍏
👀 ➡️ https://t.co/P7aFHRz6eg pic.twitter.com/IVBG4G8TCf
— Fort Wayne TinCaps (@TinCaps) March 13, 2025
The Fun Cup has been an annual event since 2017, when only four teams took part, growing steadily over the years. Now, more than eighty MiLB teams participate. The TinCaps first launched their Manzanas Luchadoras look in 2020. After a few seasons with a green and red color scheme, the TinCaps will play this year as the “Manzanas Luchadoras,” and their new colors are bright green and yellow.
CAP
The new cap is yellow with the luchador mask-wearing fighting apple logo still at the center. The team had previously worn a red, white and green cap with the same logo as is on the new yellow cap.
JERSEY
The jersey includes a new wordmark in white outlined in bright green. The jersey is yellow up top, with bright green piping, and blends to bright green at the bottom. The sleeves are yellow at the shoulders with green diamonds dividing to white near the elbows.
MiLB is chock full of specialty and alternate jerseys, as well as alternate identities and countless other (mostly) gimmicky promotions — and that’s OK — they’re usually fun, mostly family-friendly, and are a great place to take in a day at the ballpark with very reasonably priced good seats, plenty of entertainment, and it won’t cost a half month’s salary to take the family for ball game. Anything MiLB teams need to do (aside from jersey ads) to survive and hopefully prosper is A-OK by me. But I’ve always liked the Copa. It’s especially heartening to see it has blossomed from just a few teams in 2017 to the more than four score that participate today. I was actually on Shawn Anderson’s “Hall of Very Good” show with my pal Todd Radom back in 2019, when we devoted a good chunk of the show to discussing all the (then new) teams joining the program, and which caps, logos and jerseys we preferred (or hated).
So I look at the TinCaps’ Copa uniform for 2025 a little more favorably than I might “any old” alternate. But even if I weren’t predisposed to like the Fun Cup program (and most of the caps/jerseys created for it), I’d love this gorgeous yellow/green combo. As you may have noticed, I much prefer bright colors to dark, and green and gold or yellow are probably my two favorite color pairings, so this set is fantastic to me. Normally, I dislike gradients, but this pattern I do like — the solid yellow gradually fades to pastel shading (it actually reminds me a bit of tie dye) looks good. I also enjoyed their previous “Fighting Apples” look and colors, but I they’ve definitely turned it up a notch with the yellow-green color scheme.
The TinCaps will debut their new Manzanas Luchadoras style on Friday, May 16, when they host the Detroit Tigers-affiliated West Michigan Whitecaps, who’ll be playing as Las Calaveras (“Skulls”). They will also have Manzanas Luchadoras Hispanic Heritage games on Tuesday, July 1 against the A’s-affiliated Lansing Lugnuts, branded as the Locos, and on Sunday, August 3 against the Los Angeles Dodgers-affiliated Great Lakes Loons, who’ll be the Pepinillos Picantes del Norte (“Spicy Pickles of the North”).
What do you think about the new cap & jersey? Also, do any of you follow MiLB? If so — or even if not — I’d love to also get your thoughts on the Copa de la Diversión program and the (mostly) awesome alter egos participating teams create.
I misread that as Lunchadoras at first and thought that was a great pun only to be disappointed
That logo though, wow.
I love this identity. When people think of apples, they think of red. There are many apple varieties that are green and yellow. What puts this over the top is the little fists in the logo.
I want that hat!!
I’m sure they make it easy to buy one…
I like the concept and taking big swings as a MiLB team in general but this feels a little too much like a Savannah Bananas ripoff.
Came to say the same thing, it looks good, but it is definitely an off brand Bananas.
Love this. But struggling with the gradient. Even though it is better than most. Yellow as a primary color is underutilized in sports. And I love the green apple instead of red.
It’s an interesting update but I still prefer the previous set. Red, green and white represented Mexico well of course and I loved the cap. The Luchadoras is a great theme.