A Look at St Patrick’s Day 2018 Uniforms in Sports

St. Patrick’s Day, celebrated every March 17th on the anniversary of the death of Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. It’s an official holiday throughout the island of Ireland, as well as in Newfoundland because those folks know how to have a good time.

It’s also been a convenient excuse for sports teams in North America to adopt speciality uniforms on or around the 17th, and despite still playing their pre-season schedule there’s no league that dives right into this holiday more than Major League Baseball.

This year we will see all thirty MLB clubs sport special green caps for their Spring Training games this weekend; eleven teams will even pair those caps with a matching jersey.

The MLB design is templated. Every team except the Giants who like to do their own thing are wearing the same shade of green, the same patch on the side of the cap, and their usual cap logo re-coloured to match the colour scheme.

Here’s the cap designs we’ll see across the league on the 17th:

The side of the cap features a St Patrick’s Day version of the usual 2018 Spring Training patch, the back replaces the baseball on the MLB logo with a shamrock (nice).

Eleven teams who will be wearing green-themed jerseys, these jerseys will feature a shamrock on the right sleeve and a grey-and-black recoloured version of their usual patch (were necessary)

Here’s all eleven jerseys paired with the caps:

Note that the Detroit Tigers will actually be wearing the cap-logo version of the “D” on their jersey, not what you see in the graphic above.

MLB teams will also be wearing the same sock design courtesy Stance, here’s the special St. Patrick’s Day sock that will be worn in-game this weekend:

For more details on MLB’s 2018 St. Patrick’s Day fun you can read our in-depth post on it, with a few more photos, here.

***

The National Hockey League is doing what they usually do for St. Patrick’s Day this year, a templated look across the board worn only during pre-game warmup skates. This is, however, the first year of the uniform deal with Adidas so we’re at least seeing some new designs.

Because the NHL doesn’t play everyday many teams have already worn their St. Patrick’s Day pre-game jerseys, so we have some photos of them on the ice:

The design features a tartan pattern on the sleeves, a gold stripe by the elbow and a shamrock on the shoulder. Team logo on the chest recoloured in green and white. Three Adidas stripes in black go up vertically on either side of the jersey.

The back of the jersey shows some variations, the example above from the Nashville Predators has player name and number in a celtic-style font, numbers and captaincy patches are white trimmed with gold. While the Columbus Blue Jackets opted to use their usual uniform font but included a shamrock behind the number:

The Toronto Maple Leafs will NOT be wearing their St. Pats throwback uniforms this season. This is due to the fact the Leafs have already worn two speciality uniforms this season.

***

There’s many green-inspired looks for St. Patrick’s Day going on across the various minor leagues out there, here’s but a sampling of what we found.

The Atlanta Gladiators of the ECHL (Bruins affiliate) will be wearing this jersey both in honour of St. Patrick’s Day and of the recently re-named local baseball team the Gwinett Stripers (formerly the Gwinett Braves):

In the AHL the Ontario Reign will be wearing black, their usual primary colour, but now with green trim and a custom “Violent Gentlemen Hockey Club” logo (a California based hockey brand) paired with a shamrock:

Elsewhere in the AHL, the Chicago Wolves are adding orange to their mix in addition to green with these fairly awesome St. Patrick’s Day uniforms:

The Southern Pro Hockey League’s Birmingham Bulls are really going all out in their design, a shamrock-filled background, tartan patterns, shamrock shoulders and celtic lettering:

In basketball the Fort Wayne Mad Ants of the NBA Gatorade League are simply wearing a green jersey with their team wordmark in there sandwiched in between a few ads:

And we wrap this up in the National Lacrosse League where the Calgary Roughnecks will be wearing this black uniform for St Patrick’s Day but with a customized team logo for the event: