MLB Teams Wearing Bright, Colourful Uniforms This Weekend

You may find yourself watching a Major League Baseball game this weekend and thinking “hey, someone’s been messin’ with the contrast/brightness settings on my TV!”

That might very well be true, but most likely it’s just the especially bright and colourful “Players Weekend” uniforms every team will be wearing for games played Friday, August 25th through Sunday, August 27th.

Earlier this month MLB and MLBPA jointly announced the first ever “Players Weekend”, in which uniform restrictions are loosened a bit, players get to feel like a kid again being able to use custom designs on their cleats, bats, wearing nicknames on the back of their jersey instead of their last name, and of course those bright, colourful pullover “youth league” style jerseys. The uniforms made their debut during the Little League Classic game between the Pirates and Cardinals this past Sunday night.

Here’s a look at each of the uniform matchups you can expect to see this weekend:

Please note that the bright blue caps you see in the composite image above are actually a bit darker — some sort of photo/colour issue, they’ll match up with the sleeve colours of the jersey being worn (see: Royals, Dodgers, Astros, Blue Jays, etc. for examples)

Across the league there are only six colours being used for the caps: blue, red, yellow, orange, purple, grey – only the Rockies are wearing purple, only the Yankees are wearing grey so the vast majority are lumped into the other four. All but three of the teams (all of which from California) are wearing caps in one solid colour from bill to pill, the exceptions are the Bay Area clubs wearing a different bill colour, and the Dodgers who are going with their traditional white pill/button/whatever you personally call it. Another California team, the San Diego Padres will be the only club to add any additional decoration to their design, adding stripes to either side of their “SD” cap logo. The Angels are on their own.

In addition to the caps and jerseys, custom bat and shoe designs will be used. In the Cardinals-Pirates game Sunday we saw players from both teams using bats designed to mimic their sock striping, which was a surprisingly awesome addition to their set:

A lot of the focus will most certainly be on the nicknames on the back of the jerseys, from Aaron Judge’s “ALL RISE” to Josh Donaldson’s “BRINGER OF RAIN” it’ll likely be what the play-by-play teams spend most of their time talking about throughout the games this weekend.

We’ve assembled a list of around 600 different nicknames which will be worn by players this weekend, check that out here.

If you’re more interested in the uniforms being worn for Players Weekend I encourage you to check out our original coverage of the unveiling from earlier this month in which we interviewed Noah Garden, MLB’s Executive VP of Business and Anne Occi, MLB’s VP of Design Services about everything to do with the designs and the origins of this event.

Naturally these caps, jerseys, and shirseys are all available for sale right now – you can pick yourself up some of that (or just check it all out) right here.