Uniforms in 2025 will begin the process of going back to the way they were.
Remember how cool the All-Star Game used to be? There, you’d see every player wearing the uniform of his own team, cementing the idea that all MLB teams participated in the Midsummer Classic, and guys who were rivals all year could be teammates for one game, even while wearing that rival uniform.
Yeah, that was cool, but MLB changed that a few years ago and we got boring uniformity, and in fact, in several recent ASGs the uniforms worn were actively awful.
Per this article by Phil Hecken in UniWatch, you’ll see MLB going back to the previous All-Star Game practice next year:
MLB finally got the hint: fans want to see MLB All-Star Game representatives wearing their regular home or away uniforms during the game itself, and not the clown costumes they’ve worn in-game since 2021.
MLB has decided that players will once again represent their “hometown” teams for the game itself, as was the case from the 1930s through 2019.
That’s not to say that special uniforms for All-Star festivities are going anywhere.
Players selected for next season’s All-Star Game will wear a special All-Star uniform during Workout Day and the Home Run Derby the day before the All-Star Game, though players actually competing in the Derby will wear their primary home uniforms. MLB is working with New Era on the game cap for the All-Star Game. So the two parts of the MLB ASG that most people watch — the Home Run Derby and the All-Star Game itself — will have players wearing their normal team uniforms.
So MLB gets the best of both worlds — they get an official All-Star jersey they can sell as “authentic” merchandise, and they also get the great look at the game itself, where all players wear their own team’s uniforms. Next year’s All-Star Game will be at Truist Park in Atlanta, so any Cubs players selected will be wearing the team’s crisp white pinstripes.
Speaking of which. Hecken’s article also notes that the changes Nike and MLB promised after the uniform change debacle this year are going to be put in place beginning in 2025:
… changes are in the works for overall home and road team uniforms beginning next season and will include pant customization, increasing the sizing of the lettering and returning to previously used materials that the players requested.
Then be bad: According to MLB, the Players Union, Nike and Fanatics, the changes will begin in 2025 and will be fully implemented by the start of the 2026 season. There were no more specifics offered, but it sounds like MLB is giving itself a pretty big window here. Hopefully more of the visible changes (like larger NOB) will happen for 2025.
The bigger changes — like going back to the fabrics used prior to Nike to the 2024 season when they forced the Vapor Premier jersey design on teams — may take a little longer.
So, at the very least, we will get the look of the pre-2024 uniforms back next year, including larger lettering for the names on the back, but the transition back won’t be fully complete until 2026.
One thing I certainly hope is fixed next year is the blue used on the Cubs’ road jerseys. The color blue used this year is the wrong shade. You can see that clearly here. Both of these photos were taken at PNC Park, almost exactly a year apart, both in day games, thus the lighting and angle of the sun is about the same.
This one is from Aug. 28, 2024:
Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images
This one is from Aug. 27, 2023:
Photo by Justin Berl/Getty Images
You can see how different the shade of blue is. The one from 2023 is the correct shade of “Cubbie blue,” for lack of a better term.
I’m glad MLB and Nike realized what a huge mistake they had made with these uniform changes and that they’re rolling them all back, most of them next year, all of them by 2026. More on this in this MLB.com article by Anthony Castrovince.