Good morning, and Happy Mother’s Day! If you’re a Mom, I hope you have a great day.

With our esteemed founder and editor emeritus Paul Lukas auctioning off his collection of style guides, I knew I needed to buy the MLB ones from the late ’90s and early ’00s. So I splurged and bought all five Paul had. 1999-2003 is an incredibly nostalgic time for me, a time when I was just getting into sports and noticing that I really like the uniforms more than almost anything else in the sports world.

There are a number of quirks — and errors — in the 1999 MLB Style Guide, however. More in this one than in the other four combined, in fact. I wanted to share them with you. The Style Guide starts with the American League and goes through each team alphabetically, so I’m going to do the same thing, I took a whole bunch of pictures the other day, but they’re not perfect — forgive the glare from the lighting.

American League

Boston Red Sox

In 1997, the Red Sox debuted two alternate caps — a white one with a blue bill, abandoned after one game, and a red one with a blue bill and white “B” logo, worn a handful of times more but not beyond 1997. According to the Style Guide, however, the latter cap remained an official option for the Sawx through 1999. The Sawx are doing the same thing today, maintaining an alternate cap over fifteen years after it last saw the field. Another thing to note: the Red Sox are also the only American League club, and one of only three overall, to have a section on their stirrups.

Chicago White Sox

The back of the White Sox’s home uniform for 1999 is shown as NNOB, but the White Sox wore NOBs on their home jerseys in 1999.

Detroit Tigers

The back of the Tigers’ road uniforms is shown with a vertically-arched NOB. The Tigers wore radially-arched NOBs on their road uniforms in 1999.

AL Jackets

At the end of each league’s section, the style guide shows each team’s official jacket for 1999, which I thought was a cool detail.

National League

Arizona Diamondbacks

The worst photo here, forgive me. The Diamondbacks are the only team that has a “sleeve trim detail” on their alternate jerseys.

Atlanta Braves

The Braves NOBs are shown to be radially-arched, but of course the team was wearing vertically-arched NOBs back in 1999, not switching to radially-arched until 2005.

Chicago Cubs

The Cubbies are one of only two teams to have a design for their turtleneck, even though a lot of players on a number of teams in the 1990s wore turtlenecks rather than T-shirts under their jerseys.

Cincinnati Reds

The Reds are the other team to have their turtlenecks depicted, but more importantly, the Reds’ home and road undershirts are reversed. A black undershirt is listed for the home uniform and a red one for the road uniform, opposite of what the team actually wore in 1999. 1999 was the first season of the Reds’ BFBS errorera, so I wonder if the team’s plan was to wear the black undershirt at home and the red on the road before changing their minds and switching them after the style guide had already been published. This error also persists on Marc Okkonen’s site.

Colorado Rockies

The wordmark on the Rockies’ road uniform is noticeably off-center, strangely. The wordmark on the Rockies’ away uniforms in 1999 was actually properly centered.

Los Angeles Dodgers

Paul pointed this out in the listing for the 1999 Style Guide and I’m using his photo because it’s better quality, but the Dodgers are shown with a completely inaccurate road vest jersey, one that never actually saw the light of day. Interestingly, most teams with vest jerseys had their undershirts listed (see the Reds above), but the Dodgers did not.

Montreal Expos

The Expos’ pages in the Style Guide have both English and French captions, natch.

 

New York Mets

Using Paul’s photo for this one, the Mets are the only team to have alternate warm-up jerseys, of all things, and they have two of them! The alternate warm-up jerseys are the BFBS jerseys sans headspoon.

Philadelphia Phillies

The Phillies are one of three teams that have their sitrrup design listed, after the Red Sox and along with…

St. Louis Cardinals

The St. Louis Cardinals are the final team to have their stirrup design listed.

NL Jackets

Finally, we’ll wrap things up with the NL jackets from 1999.

Hope you guys enjoyed this look at the quirks in the 1999 Style Guide. The other four don’t have nearly as many interesting quirks or errors, but I will share interesting things I find in them in the coming weeks.