Today in the Ticker: Two separate shoe problems in one night, the USWNT is getting new shirts, an April Fools’ joke might become real, and more.
Uni Watch News Ticker for April 3, 2023
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Baseball
MLB
- Reds 1B Joey Votto was asked by a CBC reporter why he goes high-cuffed. “It’s an illusion to appear more athletic,” Votto said very matter-of-factly. (From Kyle Shaner)
- New Mets P Kodai Senga, whose signature pitch is a forkball that’s been nicknamed the “ghost fork,” made his MLB debut yesterday wearing a glove with a graphic of a ghost and a fork. (From David Wyatt-Hupton)
- The Astros revealed their World Series rings on Friday. (From Kary Klismet)
- “There was a bit of a funny exchange between former Atlanta OF and current TV analyst Jeff Francoeur and manager Brian Snitker about Snitker’s cold weather gear on Opening Day,” says Michael Rich.
More
- Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League’s Fubon Guardians have a new Sunday alternate. (From Jeremy Brahm)
Basketball
NBA
- Pistons G Jaden Ivey gave away his jersey in a postgame jersey swap on Friday, which forced the team’s equipment staff to take some creative problem-solving steps to create a new jersey for him. (From @zenojones)
College
- In one shoe-related incident during the second men’s Final Four game on Saturday, Miami (Fla.) PG Nijel Pack’s shoe blew up on him. That led to slight chaos when a replacement wasn’t immediately available, forcing him to sit on the bench while Connecticut’s equipment staff got him a new pair.
Hockey
NHL
- Reader Gabe Cornwall thinks the Hurricanes tend to wear red helmets on the road, but bring white helmets instead if it would avoid a color clash with one opponent on the trip. They just finished a Detroit/Montréal road trip and wore white helmets for both, also did so for an earlier Las Vegas/Arizona road trip, and at the beginning of the season wore white helmets against the Flames. That covers all three other teams that wear red or brick helmets at home, so the swapout doesn’t happen more than a few times a season.
- Yesterday, the Capitals wore their cherry blossom-themed warm-up jerseys that we’ve mentioned on the site.
- Hurricanes PA announcer Wade Minter had fun calling a penalty that involved two players with the same name. (From Al Hood)
- Penguins D Kris Letang played his 1,000th game last night, so the Pens wore Letang pregame jerseys and mimicked his stretching routine. Festivities also included commemorative pregame pucks and silver sticks for Letang and his two kids. (From our own Jerry Wolper)
Minors/Juniors
- The AHL’s Utica Comets wore jerseys designed by a teenaged fan yesterday. (From Eric Kowiatek)
- The AHL’s Rochester Americans wore powder blue jerseys for a promotion for the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings on Saturday. The Red Wings’ bat dog, Milo, also made an appearance.
Soccer
USA
- The U.S. women’s team released two new shirts for this year’s World Cup at 1am Eastern (!) this morning.
- A second shoe-related incident on Saturday occurred in the NWSL, where Gotham FC winger Lynn Williams had one boot fly off while running and managed to still make a low cross with that foot.
International
- Australia: New kits for the women’s national team. (From Liam Fitz)
- Brazil: New shirt for Atlético Mineiro of the men’s Série A and women’s Série A1. (From Kary Klismet)
- Canada: Two new shirts for the Canadian Premier League’s Atletico Ottawa. (From Kary Klismet)
- France: The shirt we mentioned Toulouse releasing in yesterday’s Ticker that was in the colors of the rugby union club Stade Toulousain was an April Fools’ joke. But in saying that yesterday the club wondered out loud if their outfitter could produce the shirt if that tweet got 3,100 retweets, which it did. (From Kary Klismet)
- Germany: SC Paderborn became the latest to wear a rainbow-accented diversity shirt in the men’s 2. Bundesliga yesterday. (From Kary Klismet)
- Spain: In a recent Liga F game between Levante and Real Sociedad, Levante player Mayra Ramirez threw off her injury mask while receiving a pass from a teammate. (From Graham Clayton)
- The Athletic did an article on what managers wear on the touchline and if that matters. Manager fashion basically runs the gamut of what you’d see in North American leagues and beyond, from suits to more casual looks to club-branded gear or even hoodies. It’s just a matter of personal preference. (From John Flory)
- Nike has new Women’s World Cup kits for 13 countries, and here’s a good breakdown of all of them. These are nowhere near as creative as Adidas’s designs, but my immediate favorites are New Zealand black, Brazil blue, England blue, and U.S. white.
Auto Racing
- Josh Berry, who’s standing in for NASCAR Cup Series driver Chase Elliott while Elliott is out injured, has an all-embroidered firesuit — referring to the ads and other details — while many Cup drivers, including Elliott, apparently don’t. (From Andy Johnson)
Volleyball
- Division III Baruch College’s men’s team got rings last week for winning last year’s conference championship. (From Kary Klismet)
Grab Bag
- A number of college lacrosse teams supported the mental health charity Morgan’s Message this weekend with warm-up shirts or helmet decals, including East Carolina women’s, Division II Grand Valley State women’s, Division II Mercyhurst women’s, and Virginia men’s. I believe the promotions, while honestly pretty frequent, aren’t coordinated. Maryland women’s tennis also joined in by wearing green shirts during their match yesterday.
- Reader Andrew Cosentino got some Baltimore salt box-themed artwork from an artist friend for the birth of his first child. Congrats, Andrew!
- Instead of champagne or Gatorade, the go-to beverage for sports celebrations lately is water.
- New uniforms for the Japanese women’s table tennis team. (From Jeremy Brahm)
- Reader Brandon Weir spotted this beautifully chain-stitched high school jacket during a recent visit to the Tampa Historical Museum.
Comments (16)
1) Good to hear that Wade Minter had a little fun with the New York Islanders’ Sebastian Aho hooking the Hurricanes’ Sebastian Aho on Sunday night. Before Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon foolishly didn’t renew John Forslund’s contract, Forslund once interrupted his play-by-play during an Islanders-Hurricanes game with “I wish they’d play on different lines!” because even he was struggling trying to clarify them for viewers.
2) At first glance, the USWNT’s kits are something of an improvement, if for no other reason that they would have been hard-pressed to be worse than Uncle Phil’s last few offerings for the men’s and women’s national teams. Last thing that actually looked good was the 2017 Gold Cup kits for the men. Should have stuck with those.
Thank you for sharing the salt box art! I think it’s so well done!
Not only does Kodai Senga’s glove feature a “Ghost Fork” graphic, his name is spelled using the two digits from his number (#34): “S3NG4”
I’m not sure why, but I love it.
The Mariners wore their navy tops on Friday, meaning that their “primary away” jersey was worn at home in the second game of the season. Not hugely surprising considering the navy has been in regular rotation at home for the past couple of years, but it now leaves the teal as the only of their four jerseys which has not been used at home so far. Assuming the teal does get worn at home, I presume this will be the first time in a while that a team has not had a regular jersey that was *only* ever used in road games. I’m guessing this happened at least a few times during the technicolour 80s, but with away greys becoming standard again for the past 30 or so years obviously that probably hasn’t happened since. Any ideas when exactly the last instance of that was?
Watched the Phillies and Texas game yesterday. I liked the Ranger’s baby blues but felt something was missing. I was thinking if the cap had a white brim it would offer more balance?
That “Plant High Panthers” jacket in the Tampa museum is from my old school, but I never saw anything that cool in the halls when I was a student there (I was Class of ’92).
I don’t follow the Amerks, but they have had 2 of the best specialty uniforms I’ve seen included in Minors/Juniors Hockey News in a while.
First, that Bills blood clot set…took a bad football uniform and made it an appealing hockey one…and now they prove how great powder blue and red look on the ice (though 2-in-1’s never look good).
If only the Avs would revive those colors as a historical homage to their Nordiques days!
Atlanta are retiring Andruw Jones number.
link
Instead of retiring his number, 25, Atlanta should retire his “A.” initial-on-back. Someday if Atlanta has a hot prospect or trades for a great player with a long-established use of 25, the team should be free to issue the jersey number, but no Atlanta player should ever again be permitted to precede his NOB with “A.”
(Also, no player should ever have a first initial on the back of his jersey. Which of the two Joneses on the team is Andruw? The one with the giant 25 on both sides of his jersey, obviously.)
It just feels like Nike gives US Soccer and quiet frankly the rest of football the D team in terms of kit designs. These World Cup dates are well known, cyclical and it’s as if Nike goes “Oh shit, we gotta put out designs for 10 teams in the next 30 days. Give ’em all a template.”
I’d really love a deep dive on what goes on in this design process, why have they been so poor for the last 5-10 years it seems. Is it lack of resources? They just don’t care? What’s going on here?
The new uniforms, which will be worn by our men as well as our women this year, are so bad. So so so so bad. Just terrible in every way, and not in a merely subjective aesthetic sense, but in important ways as a matter of objective design quality. And they’re really not bad by recent standards. Our recent Nike uniformery has been so consistently dreadful that these new uniforms, which for most countries, even tiny ones that don’t even qualify for major tournaments, would easily be the ugliest uniforms in federation history, are of above-average quality for USA.
It’s kind of heartbreaking, though, since so many of our Women’s World Cup competitors are bringing absolute fire to the tournament, in uniform terms. We’re gonna look like such crap by comparison.
Considering Nike had but a single WBC team to outfit, and still managed to spend less than thirty seconds on that design, you can be pretty sure it’s not for being rushed or lacking resources – they just kinda aren’t bothered.
Moreover, Nike’s express strategy when it comes to World Cups in particular is to put team Nike first, put as much time and effort into their brand identity for the tournament as possible, then fit the team colours into the template. It’s really that cynical.
I cannot wait for this terrible Nike soccer kit template to die. Those collars are BRUTAL.
Not sure if it was intentional or not, but the collars are an almost 1 to 1 copy of the Nike template from 2002. A lot of nostalgia for that era, but design wise it has no business returning.
It sucks, but no other supplier goes as hard on the idea of brand uniformity at major tournaments as Nike does – expressly at the expense of the nations they outfit.
In English football, a managers style is often referred to by their attire.
“Are they a track suit manager?” usually means are they a hands on coach or more of a “suit manager” who is more of a delegater and less likely to be the one leading training.