Major League Baseball today announced a series of initiatives for Memorial Day, including the return of poppy patches, emblazoned with the words “Lest we forget,” to be worn by all uniformed personnel.
MLB used camouflage and/or olive-accented uniforms on Memorial Day for many years. But in 2019, they switched the camo/olive gear to the relatively obscure holiday Armed Forces Day (the third Saturday in May) and started using the poppy patches for Memorial Day.
Per MLB:
On-Field & Uniform Elements
- As an additional tribute to service men and women our Nation has lost, all on-field MLB personnel will wear the traditional Memorial red poppy on the left side of their jerseys with “Lest We Forget” language included.
- The uniforms will not be sold at retail to the public.
- Memorial Day themed base jewels and lineup cards will be used to commemorate the day.
As has been the case since 2019, the poppy-patched jerseys will not be available for retail sale.
All MLB teams playing on Memorial Day (Monday, May 26th) will also observe the National Moment of Remembrance. All Clubs whose games are active at 3:00 p.m. (Local Time) will temporarily pause for an extended moment of silence to participate in this unified moment of gratitude.
This is how you do holiday specific uniforms.
Agreed.
But after effing up Memorial Day for so long, I’m not wont to give MLB any props for finally getting right what they should have gotten right from the get-go.
“Base jewels”. Who knew there was an industry name for those…
“relatively obscure holiday Armed Forces Day”
Maybe obscure to you….not to the crowd i run with.
You run with 9-year olds? Seems like a holiday made up by children who love GI Joe.
Kris, I sense cynicism in your post, so I’d like to invite you to our Armed Forces Day celebration…
You can enjoy good food and drink and play some Pokemon Go while the grown-ups discuss and celebrate their military service days.
Educate yourself. And maybe thank the men and women in the military who provide the freedom to allow for your ignorance.
Armed Forces Day was established to honor Americans serving in the US military branches and to unify the celebrations for each military sector. Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson announced the creation of a unified Armed Forces Day on August 31, 1949, to replace separate holidays for each military branch.
Except that each of the branches still celebrates their own special day, so the holiday is superfluous.
And lest you think America doesn’t celebrate its military, there are also the following…
• 29 March: National Vietnam War Veterans Day (general commemoration in the Armed Forces)
• Last Monday of May: Memorial Day
• 14 June: Flag Day and U.S. Army Birthday (United States Army) — I believe there will be some kind of YUGE party that day, at considerable taxpayer expense, with a Soviet-era-type parade planned.
• 4 August: Coast Guard Day (United States Coast Guard)
• 17 September: Constitution Day (general commemoration in the Armed Forces)
• 18 September: Air Force Day (United States Air Force)
• 13 October: U.S. Navy Birthday (United States Navy)
• 27 October: Navy Day (United States Navy)
• 10 November: Marine Corps Birthday (United States Marine Corps)
• 11 November: Veterans Day
• 13 December: National Guard Day (National Guard of the United States)
• 20 December: Space Force Birthday (United States Space Force)
But yeah, we definitely need more days to celebrate the military.
Phil, if you’re so damn cynical about military holidays and how the sports world celebrates them (Special Unis, Flyovers(Heavens,at taxpayers expense!) then just don’t report on them anymore B -D
Space Force birthday day… Yeah everybody celebrating that one
My reply has nothing to do with MLB (or any league) and how it celebrates miliary holidays.
Tim (Just Kiddin’) made a remark specifically about why Armed Forces DAY (not weekend) was created in 1949, essentially as a catch-all honor for all branches, to “replace” all the branch-specific holidays; I contend Armed Forces Day, being *relatively* new, isn’t at the top of most Americans’ list, hence I said it was “relatively obscure.”
If you have 100 Americans lined up and you ask each one “When is Armed Forces Day?” I’d imagine the number who could tell you “Why, it’s the third Saturday in May” is pretty low (I’d say less than 20% would know it, and it’s probably less). In fact, I would bet you dollars to donuts that at least half of those couldn’t even identify what month AFD is, much less the specific date.
AFD may not be “relatively” obscure to the military community, but to the rest of us, it’s still a relatively obscure holiday.
And as far as reporting on specialty uniforms or logos/patches/ribbons/etc. worn during the season, UW will continue to report on those as its germane to our mission.
And I’m not cynical about military holidays, but honestly, I do think there are a lot of them (too many). I also find it a bit odd that MLB decided to drop the Mom’s Day/Dad’s Day (which MLB finally reduced to a single day after several years of making it a weekend long thing), but not AFD camo caps, which aren’t just worn on AFD (which is Saturday) but Fri-Sat-Sun.
But once MLB finally realized Memorial Day is not the day to celebrate active or retired military, but rather those who fell in battle, it needed to find a day (or three) to wear camo. Since MLB doesn’t (yet) play on Vets Day, they discovered AFD and moved the merch dump up to that weekend.
Again, AFD may not be a relatively obscure holiday to members of the military, but to civilians, it is.
Does Brad Bierman have one of these patches?
I’m glad to see MLB continue to celebrate these holidays appropriately.
I tend to think of the poppy as a specifically British/Canadian thing tied to what we call Veterans Day. Like, in Britain, it’s almost a social obligation for everyone to wear a poppy around the day. To the point that Prime Minister Cameron and his team travelled to Beijing in November 2010, so they all had poppies on their lapels. And in China, the poppy is more associated with national humiliation by Britain and with foreign conquest and colonization of China during and after the Opium Wars, so the lapel poppies were seen by Cameron’s hosts as aggressively offensive. Anyway, I remain curious whether the poppy will catch on more widely in the States as a remembrance symbol. The poppy is rooted in very particular WWI history and culture, which the United States doesn’t really share.
“The poppy is rooted in very particular WWI history and culture, which the United States doesn’t really share.”
And I think we can especially thank John McCrae for that.
I don’t know where you’ve been in the past 50 years but it wasn’t America…
where I have seen Poppies given out every single year by veterans..
the problem is that they are too old or dead by now so there’s no one else to hand out the poppies…
think about it
There is a bit of a local (to me) connection with adopting the poppy as a symbol or remembrance:
link
link
Damn, Phil, if you so damn cynical about Military Service Holidays and how the Sports World celebrates them (i.e. Special unis, flyovers(heavens! at taxpayers expense!), ceremonies, etc.), then just don’t report on them… the last time I checked MLB and NFL do not celebrate “Space Force Birthday Day” but thanks for the warning about there being too many celebrations of the military when it’s the only real reason we have Freedom of Press…
May you and your family enjoy the freedoms that our American Military has afforded you for centuries now. Peace.
There was a time from the end of the Vietnam war until the First Gulf war where many did not care about active duty or Veterans. September 11 was a game changer when people realized the military really does save freedom.
If you never signed the contract, you will never know what it is to serve.
I respect the brave men and women who have put themselves in harm’s way, and on many occasions paid the ultimate price for the country they are sworn to defend.
I DO NOT respect sporting apparel that uses camouflage, red, white, and blue or stars to mimic military cosplay; nor do I respect the kind of arm-twisting “patriotism” that affects crowdthink at sporting and other public events. It is jingoism, and it has no place in venues where people may have good reasons for mistrusting the military and the US Flag.