MLB Catchers Have Started Wearing the “Manssiere”

Paul here, briefly returning to the site because something interesting has caught my eye. It started when I was watching the Mets’ home opener last Friday afternoon and noticed that catcher Luis Torrens (above) was wearing a chest protector with an odd-seeming strap format that I couldn’t recall having seen before. From the back, it almost looked like a bra.

A bit of photo research confirmed that Torrens had switched to this protector design in spring training of this year (here’s what he wore last year), so this bra-like design was definitely new for him. But was it new to MLB, or had other catchers previously used it and I just hadn’t noticed?

I was curious, so I put out a query on Twitter (my first tweet in nearly a year!), where I learned that Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh has been wearing the same design:

Looks like it’s just a new design from Rawlings? Here’s Cal Raleigh today against SF pic.twitter.com/3Mk012yrFD

— Brian Renick (@brenick77) April 4, 2025

Photo research indicates that Raleigh, like Torrens, didn’t start wearing this design until this season (although last year he wore something sorta/kinda similar). Nobody on Twitter could recall having seen the design before, and neither could any well-placed contacts I consulted, so perhaps this is a new design from Rawlings. (If anyone knows more, definitely fill us in!)

But the funniest thing about my Twitter query is that several people responded by referencing the Seinfeld episode where Kramer invents a male brassiere for Frank Costanza, although the two of them argue over whether it should be called “the bro” or “the manssiere.”

So what should we call this new catcher’s accessory — a bro or a manssiere? I’m going with manssiere, because “bro” sounds too, well, bro-ish.

I should point out here that the most important thing about catching gear is that it’s comfortable and functional. So if Torrens, Raleigh, and any other MLB backstops think the manssiere helps them perform better, more power to them. If it catches on throughout the game, I’m sure we’ll all get used to it. But for now, I think it’s kinda funny-looking.

Update: Reader/commenter Matt Bonnett reports that Rawlings actually introduced this style in 2023, so it turns out that I’m very late to the manssiere party! You can see the back harness shown if you scroll through the photos in this product listing. Thanks, Matt!

I’ve long been obsessed with catching gear. In fact, one of my earliest memories of uni-watching is when I was growing up in the early 1970s and noticed that Reds catcher Johnny Bench’s chest protector didn’t have the vertical strap on the back like everyone else’s.

And of course chest protector straps played a key role in one of MLB’s greatest uni-numerical oddities. That was in 1991, when Padres catcher Benito Santiago changed his number from 9 to 09 because he didn’t like the way the vertical strap obscured the single numeral. (I don’t know why he didn’t just eliminate that strap like Bench had done.)

Santiago stuck with No. 09 when he moved from the Padres to the Marlins, but later in his career he wore No. 9 — without the zero — for the Cubs. It’s not clear to me if he had softened his view on the number being obscured by the strap or if the tradition-minded Cubbies simply wouldn’t let him wear the zero.

If you scroll back up to the pics of Torrens and Raleigh at the beginning of this article, you can see that their numbers are almost completely eclipsed by the manssiere. I bet Santiago would’ve hated that!

Okay, that’s it for my brief return to uni-watching. But while I have you here, let me remind you that I’m selling off a bunch of old Uni Watch merch and memorabilia. A lot of it is now sold out, but some choice items are still available — full details here.