One week ago, against the Washington Nationals, the San Francisco Giants wore their black alternate jerseys. Normally, this wouldn’t merit an article, but the strange thing was that the Giants were playing at Nationals Park. Then they did it again in Detroit against the Tigers on Wednesday.
As SFGate reported earlier this week, the Giants last wore an alternate jersey on the road in 2019. Since then, they’ve only worn their standard away uniforms outside San Francisco. The last time they wore a black jersey on the road was during the 2001 and 2002 seasons, which was just a black-on-black version of their road uniform at the time.
The current black alternate jerseys were first introduced in 2020, replacing the grey road alternates with a similar design — placket piping and the SF mark on the wearer’s left chest.
The Giants confirmed in a Tweet last Saturday that the standard road uniforms are still the “main road uniform,” while they “may cycle in the black on occasion.”
The story behind the #SFGiants wearing black today:
It’s a call back to the team unity that was built in Spring Training, and wanting to carry that momentum through the season.
The grey jersey will remain our main road uniform, but the team may cycle in the black on occasion. pic.twitter.com/q1PGIVwrg2
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) May 24, 2025
A lot of the SFGate article about the change focuses on the weirdly corporate way the Giants tweet is worded, which I think is the club trying to shoehorn in a story behind the decision to start wearing the black jersey on the road when there really isn’t any. While the Giants do wear these black jerseys during Spring Training, it seems strange that they’d choose the end of May to start wearing them on the road as a “call back to the team unity that was built in Spring Training.” Not every aesthetic choice in sports needs a story behind it! Sometimes you can just choose to wear something!
I’ve always dug this jersey, to be honest. I’m really partial to the SF mark as a chest logo (I still think they should bring the Will Clark-era roadies back as their primary road uniforms, and dropping the modernized versions for the black version was a mistake). Plus, if the Giants are going to have a black softball top, they should wear it on the road so they can wear their gorgeous home unis as frequently as possible.
The Giants are not the first team this season to take a previously-designated home alternate and wear it on the road — the Boston Red Sox wore their red alternates on the road for their first handful of Friday away games, though not last night against Atlanta.
More looks at the Giants’ black road uniforms on the road are below.
What are your thoughts on the Giants wearing their black alternates away from home? Comment down below.
When the Giants were winning championships, they always wore gray on the road – as a traditional team should. The black top reminds me of the lean years of the 70s and early 80s.
If you’re going to have 4 uniforms it makes sense to have a home alt & road alt. I hadn’t been following the Giants uniforms that closely but I’d have assumed this was their road alt with the orange being a home alt. So I was today years old when I learned they’d only worn this at home of late until now.
That said, I favor a compromise between the traditionalists and the folks who like flashier uniforms. My ideal with be for each team who wants it to have a single colored alternate, to be worn only at home, only during a weekend series, so Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, take your pick, but the day of the weekend should remain consistent throughout the season.
Then outside of that, it’s home whites, road greys.
The Braves wore their red, home alternate on the road in the first game of a doubleheader against the Phillies earlier this week. It was the first time the red top has been used on the road.
As reported in the 05/30/2025 Ticker.
Last I looked there was no ticker yesterday. It was apparently posted much later than usual.
It was actually the 2nd time. The first time was 4/16/2021 at Wrigley.
My apologies! The announcers said it was the 1st time ever.
I like them a lot. I think the black pairs well with the gray pants, and I like that the jersey can be worn at home on the road. As someone who watches almost every game, it’s nice to have a change of pace on the road every once in a while instead of having to look at the boring gray jerseys 81 times a year. Plus, when they’re only a home alternate, that means in 81 home games we have to rotate between our cream uniforms, CC, orange (our best look), and black. This helps balance out the dispersion even if just a bit.
Boy oh boy, I’ll bet the team really felt unified after putting those on! [eye roll]
Seriously, I’ve finally come to accept color tops after hating them for years. These are pretty nice.
Anything even the early 2010-2012 BP jersey styles are better than every CC teams wear.
This is one instance where I don’t assume the presence of BS marketingspeak storytelling. Clubhouse dynamics are a funny thing, and rarely reported on in real time, so there could very well be something going on among the players where one of them suggested the black jersey thing and the other players went with it and here we are. Like, someone’s feelings are hurt and they like the black jersey so everyone else agrees to wear black in solidarity, or some players grumble that they don’t feel as tight as a unit as they did in spring, so they agree to wear black. Something like that would be totally normal.
I remember some navy jerseys that seemed to unify a team in October 2019…
I saw the black SF jerseys in person last Saturday. They scored zero runs against Jake Irvin. Worked for me!
As for the black alt, as far as recolored softball tops go, it’s pretty good. I like the piping and the SF logo here. Personally, I regard the Giants regular road grays as one of the best road unis of all time, so even a B-plus alternate will be a huge downgrade for me.
SAN FRANCISCO looks good on a uniform; I prefer the roadies without the headspoon though.
100% agree. The grey jerseys are too cluttered.
These should be a road alternate, to me the look better with the gray away pants, same for the White Sox black alts. They look weird with the white pinstripe home pants.
Wish they gave more detail about how this increases team unity, when they always wear the same outfit to work, regardless of color.
Hahaha… this is pretty funny!
I hadn’t thought of that, but, duh, you’re totally right.
As a black alternate jersey goes, this is a good one, and it wouldn’t bother me if they shelved the overdone grey shirts— or at least simplified them.
I think it might be as simple as “hey, we wear these new black city connects at home, let’s move the more traditional black alt to road games.”
Looks great to me. The ‘SF’ logo goes with the placket piping. The arched San Francisco does not. It still bugs me to see that on the grays.
Honestly, as good as the Giants uniforms are and mostly have been, the gold trim–and the team’s insistence on drop-shadowing–complicates their once clean, classic look. It’s been a quarter century since the gold was added, so I guess it’s here to stay. Just removing the drop shadowing, whatever the color, would be a big improvement.
If they must wear softball tops, it’s hard to beat the mid-century “Giants” script look:
link
…something more imaginative than just switching the colors of a current jersey.
Well they are 0-2 in those unis so far. If they go 0-3 perhaps they’ll “strike out” and retire them on the road. But hey, if they want to wear them I say more power to them.
If they must wear softball tops, it’s hard to beat the mid-century “Giants” script look.
Those uniforms are underrated classics.
As a giants fan, I like this in very much and approve of this move. The home “French vanillas” are gorgeous, the script orange unis are very cool, and this black uni is a very clean look. The weak link in their wardrobe has often been the road grey, as San Francisco is too long to get real fancy with its often just a blah jersey compared to the rest of the wardrobe. Not that they should ditch it, but they do look better in these blacks I think. They’ve dabbled in this look in the past, and I seem to recall a set that just had the orange SF with no drop shadow or anything. I may be misremembering, but I think that is a cleaner look. The drop shadow is doing no favors here, it’s just existing and adding visual clutter where they could go 10% bigger on the logo with an unadorned SF and it would just pop more. Nevertheless this is a good look for them and a welcome move.
Hope for the Mets wearing black on the road once in a while!
The only way I’d ever say “yes” to this is if they were to dump the incredibly stupid stealth pullovers AND the CCs. It’s bad enough the Mets have broken protocol several times already this year to wear black at home on non-Friday games. Don’t need to see that shit on the road too.
Fully agree with this statement.
As far as softball jerseys go, I like this one, mainly because of the use of the SF logo, which I’ve previously encouraged.
These locker-room superstitions are detestable, because there’s no limiting principle to what they can justify. It’s all very nice that this time around, they’ve led to an alt jersey that many find attractive. But the next time, they can just as easily lead to some horrible uni fad that will make Paul weep justifiable tears of hot lead. Players have no business exercising their discretion in matters like these.
I think the Giants uniforms from 1994-1999 were the best when they wore the plain white at home with the classic Giants script and the vertical arch San Francisco on the road with no headspoon. There were no black or orange alternates those years that I can remember.
Nice jersey,better than their current grey ones.