Reds Throwing Back to 1902, 1911 Uniforms This Weekend

In 2019 the Cincinnati Reds are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the first professional baseball team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, with a series of throwback uniforms marking various eras in Reds history.

This weekend against the San Francisco Giants, the Reds will begin that throwback series by wearing uniforms from 1902 on Saturday night before jumping ahead a decade to 1911 on Sunday afternoon.

The 1902 set is cream and features the old-style baseball collar, half-button jersey, and awesomely enough, a front pocket. “CINCINNATI” is arched across the front in red, caps are cream with a series of red vertical stripes and a single horizontal stripe where the crown meets the visor. The back of the jersey is just the player number in red, no names.

From the Cincinnati Reds:

The Reds wore this uniform style during home games in the inaugural year of the ballpark that was christened the “Palace of the Fans.” Arguably the most distinctive ballpark ever built, the Palace’s architecture was inspired by the great temples of ancient Greece and Rome and in doing so, spoke to the status of baseball both in Cincinnati and around the country.

The Reds will wear this uniform for their game on Saturday, May 4th.

For Sunday, the Reds will fast forward to 1911, wearing all-blue uniforms including, yes, blue pants.

The half-button style of the jersey remains but the pocket and the giant collar are gone. The dark denim-blue top is trimmed with red piping that follows from the collar down the buttons on the front, a period-accurate Reds logo on the upper left chest in red and blue and another wishbone Reds “C” on the left arm. Player numbers on the back are white, no trim, no name. Cap is blue with the Reds’ “C” on the crown and a single red horizontal line across near the bottom.

From the Reds:

The 1911 season was one of several years in the first two decades of the 20th century that the Reds adopted a blue denim colour scheme for its road uniforms. While the Reds limited the all-blue look to this relatively compressed time period, the club’s incorporation of a blue shade into its uniform colour scheme recurred frequently into the mid-1960s.

Cincinnati will wear 15 throwback uniforms in total during the 2019 season, the full schedule of those games below.