Major League Baseball will once again honour those who lost their lives while serving in the United States Armed Forces with a special patch worn on player uniforms.
For all MLB games played on Memorial Day, Monday, May 27, 2024, players will wear a red poppy flower patch on the front of their jerseys; the patch will include a black banner reading “Lest We Forget.”
This will be the fifth time Major League Baseball has marked the U.S. Memorial Day holiday with a poppy patch, previously doing so in 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023. Prior to 2019, players would wear green and camouflage-themed caps (and sometimes jerseys); this practice has since been moved to Armed Forces Day weekend, held one week prior.
The patch design in 2024 will be the same as it was in each of the previous four seasons. These patches will not be sold at retail to the general public.
The origins of the poppy being worn to remember those lost at war can be traced back to the poem “In Flanders Fields,” penned by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian poet, physician, and World War I soldier. In the poem, written in 1915 following the funeral of a friend who had been killed in combat, McCrae makes references to the poppies growing over the graves of fallen soldiers.
In Flanders Fields, the poppies blow
“In Flanders Fields,” (excerpt) by John McCrae, 1915
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
Poppies are commonly worn by the general public, most often in Canada and the United Kingdom, throughout the first eleven days of November, leading up to Remembrance/Veterans Day on the 11th. The American Legion in the U.S. has long asked those wishing to honour war dead to do so by wearing a poppy on National Poppy Day, which is the last Friday before Memorial Day. However, this is one tradition which appears to have not caught on quite yet across the country.
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