The foreign patch looks as if it has always been there. It’s circular, and it matches the brown that accents the San Diego Padres’ uniforms. You won’t be able to miss it on the right sleeve when Fernando Tatis Jr. flips his bat after hitting a homer, which is exactly the point of Motorola becoming the first corporate sponsor to reach a deal to appear on the uniform of a Major League Baseball team.
Just in time for the next millennium, baseball will join other major sports in adopting sponsor jersey patches because nothing quite screams modern! more than a franchise finding every inch of real estate on playing surfaces, broadcasts and players’ clothing to make an easy buck. The spacey, double-arched “M” logo belonging to Motorola already appears on the jerseys of the NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks as well as that of the Indiana Pacers. By next spring, it will be woven into — or, in some traditionalists’ opinion, blemish — the Padres’ pinstripes.
“You do lose that kind [of] classic uniform, I guess,” Padres pitcher Craig Stammen said, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. “But you watch the NBA, they’ve got it on there. It’s kind of part of the world as it is today, and I don’t have an issue with it one way or the other.”
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This is what progress looks like in baseball: a step steeped in capitalism so owners can fatten their pockets, with the hope that the millions paid out from these partnerships will trickle down to the labor. Yet and still, a baby step into the future, no matter how loudly the purists protest.
Always a beat slow and a decade or two late, baseball is trying to catch up with the times. The sport would do itself a favor if it modernizes its culture in more meaningful ways, even when dollar signs aren’t attached.
Baseball needs to do away with forcing assimilation and stunting individualism under the pretext of teaching young players “the rules.” That goes along with allowing players to express opinions that may not fit the confined space of a conservative clubhouse. If that sounds like too much, too fast, then let’s take it slow and start here: Can a Yankees player grow a beard already?
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In 2022, we have self-driving cars and billionaires taking pleasure cruises into space, but the New York Yankees still make their players look like the ghosts walking out of the mystical cornfield in Iowa. All players still sport a clean-shaven look and trim their tresses as part of an outdated policy that started under George Steinbrenner in the 1970s. For the demographic that baseball tried to appeal to with its “Let the Kids Play” campaign: Just know that was a very, very, very long time ago.
Inexplicably, this policy has remained almost a half-century later, long after Steinbrenner’s death. Just take a look at the before and after photos of pitcher Miguel Castro.
Last season when Castro pitched for the New York Mets, his golden-dipped dreadlocks nearly touched the nameplate on the back of his jersey, and his thick beard covered his impressive jawline. Now with the Yankees, Castro looks as if he’s in the Sunken Place: braids gone, beard shaved, completely altered to fit what the Yankees deem an acceptable appearance.
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The Yankees may not have a full roster available during crucial division games in Toronto next month, but hey, at least their unvaccinated players will look acceptable, like clean-cut office managers, while sitting at home.
The Atlanta Braves may not have the same formal policies as the Yankees, but recently Ronald Acuña Jr. peeled back layers of his franchise’s stodgy rules when discussing his beef with former teammate Freddie Freeman. Apparently when Acuña, now a 24-year-old Venezuelan star, first made it to the big leagues, Freeman and a few others took it upon themselves to teach the then-rookie how to be a Braves player. How to wear his hat the right way, his hair the right way and even his eye black the White way. They were, in Acuña’s telling, bold enough to wipe the grease off his face.
In an interview with MLB Network, Freeman responded to Acuña’s grievances. Though Freeman defended his role as den mother, his acknowledgment of certain rules revealed, again, that a culture of conformity is keeping baseball frozen in its past.
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“When you put on a Braves uniform, in that organization, there’s organizational rules. You don’t cover the ‘A’ with sunglasses, you don’t wear earrings, you have your hair a certain length. You wear a uniform during BP. You don’t have eye black coming down across your whole face,” Freeman said. He added: “I guess I was one of the older guys that did have to enforce those kinds of things in the clubhouse. But when you put on a Braves uniform, those [rules] are what happens there.”
Acuña later backtracked. Proving how well he has blended into baseball’s customs, he blamed the media instead of standing behind his raw and honest views about a former teammate. You can imagine that maybe Acuña received another talking-to — in the same way it was natural to believe that someone might have directed St. Louis Cardinals ace Jack Flaherty to delete tweets that were critical about baseball in 2020.
On the day when the NBA, the WNBA and other leagues came to a halt, as athletes protested the shooting of Jacob Blake as a show of solidarity, baseball played on. Flaherty expressed his displeasure with the decision through a series of tweets but would later expunge several of the more fiery messages from his account and express regret for putting “my teammates in a bad position.”
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Baseball moves slowly — in the way the game is played and how it evolves over time. By adopting jersey patches, the sport is only following a trend set by other leagues. The decision makes financial sense, even though it adds nothing to the viewing audience or to the game itself. But there are more significant changes that America’s former pastime should make, to better reflect the diversified nation it once represented — even if they won’t help the bottom line.
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